


Captains, Rebels & Survivors

by captainsandsoldiers



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU no death star attack of Scarif obv, F/M, Fix-It, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Slow Burn, desert island/castaways fic, this movie broke me and I'm trying to fix myself with hardcore cass/jyn ok, ~in progress~
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 46,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8928271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainsandsoldiers/pseuds/captainsandsoldiers
Summary: "“Come on, just a little farther,” she said in a strained tone as they stumbled into the sand and the untamed jungle around the Imperial base. She knew that she had to make a choice then and there, any hesitation would surely cost them their lives. The amount of times they both had narrowly escaped death at that point was far more than she was comfortable with. Though she knew the odds of surviving one near death experience had no logical impact on the statistical likelihood of surviving the next, she still felt like they were tempting fate..."
Moments after making an escape from the base, Jyn does what she does best; “requisition” a mode of escape, in this case, an Imperial power boat to jet off to somewhere, anywhere else on Scarif to escape, with an injured Cassian in tow. When they crash land on a island, they'll have to do what it takes to survive, together... and deal uncertainly with the growing attraction between them.





	1. Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, welcome to my latest fic/self therapy to deal with yet another Star Wars movie breaking me in half. Obviously, AU on this one: no Death Star attack, Cassian & Jyn escape. The Scarif scenes reminded me very much of castaway/desert island books & movies that I like so I couldn't get away without giving that treatment to these characters. Serious shippiness to come, enjoy!

Chapter 1 \- Escape

Between the pounding in her ears, the shooting pain in her foot and the burning feeling in most her other limbs, it was a wonder that Jyn Erso was even conscious much less moving, _much less_ supporting the weight of another human, one much larger and heavier than herself for that matter. Cassian Andor - she could feel him stumble, his breath heavy as he tried to keep up with her. She would not, could not let him pass out; she had pulled his arm around her shoulder and was having to stay at half pace to allow him to keep up. She was not sure if the affirmations she was mumbling under her breath were for his sake or her own.

“ _Come on, just a little farther,”_ she said in a strained tone as they stumbled into the sand and the untamed jungle around the Imperial base. She knew that she had to make a choice then and there, any hesitation would surely cost them their lives. The amount of times they both had narrowly escaped death at that point was far more than she was comfortable with. Though she knew the odds of surviving one near death experience had no logical impact on the statistical likelihood of surviving the next, she still felt like they were tempting fate.

She paused for just a moment, feeling Cassian slump against her, and made her choice.

“Almost there, just hold on, please, hold on….” she whispered as she directed them toward the jungle’s edge, resolving that she needed her full strength for the next task at hand. Dropping to her knees in the sand, she helped him down, where he slumped to the ground on his back. Gasping, Jyn grabbed him by the shoulders, as he turned his head up toward her and squinted, clearly grasping to consciousness. Some of the front lock of his hair slid across his forehead, hard with dried blood which was darkening around his hairline.

His lips moved but she could not hear what was coming out of them.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she told him firmly, worrying that if she let go of his shoulders he might somehow not wake up. He looked at her through half lidded eyes, those eyes so usually intense and piercing, and gave a small nod of understanding. Jyn ran her tongue across her dry lips and forced herself to let go, getting to her feet and grimacing through the pain of her injured ankle to start off along the edge of the jungle toward where should could only wildly hope was what she was looking for. Wild hope had gotten her so far at this point, and it was all that was left to rely on. That, and a brief glimpse she had made from the dish tower.

She pushed her matted hair out of her face, wiping the sweat pooling near her brows away. The island was so damn humid, and her feet sinking into the sand and slowing her down was not helping - this tropical climate was not something she was used to. The next priority following getting off the damn thing was getting _water_. They were better off shot by Imperial blasters than stuck somewhere dying of thirst - probably.

The acrid smell of burning metal and who knew what else, coupled with the distant sounds of explosions had settled to a background hum to Jyn, who was single minded in her determination to get to a place she had only seen for a few moments. But she _had_ seen it, she knew. An artificial canal dug into the jungle, where there were several Imperial powerboats. There, she knew she risked running into some sort of guard stationed there, but she was counting then on the chaos on the base calling them away. Several other variables made the escape she was planning in her head extremely _unlikely_ , chief among them being that she had no idea if there was even a hospitable island anywhere near here much less being able to find it, but like so many of the things she had faced recently, there quite literally was no other choice. The fighting on the ground had most likely killed their main means of escape, and running out there to look for another whilst Alliance and Imperial fighters were shooting at each other was a death sentence, especially with Cassian in so weak a state.

Stumbling over roots and pushing branches out of the way as the jungle got thicker, Jyn’s breath was starting to get ragged. But then she suddenly could see it, the light of a clearing, and she jumped back out into the sand, finding herself in exactly what she had seen from above. There was a canal of artificial depth cutting into the island, surrounded by a metal platform. Several docks jutted into it, and on either side, sleek grey boats with a crimson stripe across their hulls, the flame like Imperial logo on the stern. They were all small but clearly built for speed, roughly triangular with very pointed bows. Each had a square opening in the back for seating and cargo, and a control panel at the front with a short glass partition around it to keep out seaspray. At the end of the canal sat a small maintenance house that she had surmised was currently empty, as there was nobody running out and shooting at her.

Jyn ran to the one nearest to the opening of the canal to the sea. She looked out into the distance, raising her hand to shield her eyes from the sun and seeing naught but turquoise sea off the island’s coast. Out there, _somewhere_ , there had to be somewhere to hide. She did not have time to think farther than that, and she quickly returned to the task at hand. The boat was latched onto the dock via a raised control panel that sat on the dock itself, the front of which was had a blank screen and a mess of buttons. Pausing to look down at the array without a single idea as to how to free the boat, which was attached via a tube shaped metal arm connecting to its side, Jyn cursed under her breath. She could only hope that these kinds of boats functioned like the kind she had… _extracted_ in her past.

Pushing her loose hair back again, she ran to the other end of the canal to the squat black control house, searching for some sort of heavy metal object with which she might sever the metal arm and free the boat. And then there was the distinct worry that this might trigger some kind of alarm up at the base. She decided this had to be the last thing she did, then, Cassian had to be fetched first. An sudden and extremely loud explosion back up at the base made her jump, but she shook it off and hurried up to the door. Finding it locked, she took a few steps back and slammed into it with her shoulder, causing searing pain to herself, but a crack in the structure that allowed her to shove the door open.

Finding herself inside a small, dark room, Jyn quickly scanned the interior for what she needed. Hanging on the wall was a row of identical, Imperial issue canteens on black straps. Empty, to Jyn’s distress, but she slung one across her back anyway for the water she hoped they’d later find. There were several metal boxes on a shelf and opening one, she found medical supplies, bandages and antiseptics, and she shoved her hand inside, cramming as many as she could fit into the pocket of her vest.

And then, in the corner, exactly what she needed. A large Imperial flag on a metal flagpole - what she would use to extract the boat. She hefted with it with small groan, and, hoisting it at her side like a battering ram, she went back outside. Returning to the boat, she hefted the pole on board along with the canteen and her vest, to mitigate the island’s intense humidity which was starting to really take its toll.

Ripping back through the jungle, her heart was in her throat, hoping that she would find Cassian where she left him. She heard him before she saw him, raising himself up on an arm and his blaster resting on his chest.

“ _Jyn?”_ he called, squinting into the woods. She increased her pace and emerged.

“Let’s...go,” she said between gasps, stopping for a moment to catch her breath and resting her hands on her legs as she bent over. “Think I… found a way to escape.”

She stood back upright and helped Cassian back to his feet.

“To where?” he asked weakly, peering at her with his face looking paler than before. She knew then he needed to be medically attended to as soon as they got to safety. But it would have to wait.

“I’m still figuring that out,” she replied shortly, and pulled his arm across her shoulder again, and slid her arm around his back.

“Let’s go. It’s not far.”  
  
Getting back through the jungle supporting Cassian took double the time, and they were silent until Jyn guided them to the clearing and the canal.

“Oh, what in the…” Cassian muttered to himself, cradling his blaster closer.

“Unless you have any better ideas,” Jyn replied, unfazed as she pulled them toward the boat where she had stocked the few supplies she’d stolen. She helped Cassian board and he stumbled to the back of the craft, sitting down on one of the hard seats. Though clearly in pain, he sat up with his blaster at alert. He looked at her, his gaze intense again.

“You know how to drive this thing?”

Jyn did not answer and hopped onto to the boat. She picked up the heavy flagpole, and stood up precariously on one of the side benches, holding it aloft. For the briefest of moments, she looked like some kind of Imperial heroine, toting their standard, before she brought down the pole with all her might onto metal arm attached to the boat’s side. It did the job - with a crash and a wrenching ripping sound, the metal arm dislodged off the boat’s side and blew a few sparks. The pole kept moving and she felt it sink into the bottom of the canal, and the motion caused the flag to rip off the pole and be left in her hands. She threw it down and turned to the boat’s control panel, feeling her palms sweat.

In the distance, she heard movement in the trees, shouting.

“Troopers,” Cassian called from the stern, turning to look at her as she looked back at the jungle. He turned back, holding his blaster even higher aloft. It was now or never, Jyn knew, as she turned back to the control panel, which had lit up since she’d severed the metal arm. Quickly taking stock of the controls, she mustered all she could remember from a certain occurrence of past thievery, and turned the shiny farthest left switch. Instantly, the craft began to hum with power, the water around them rippling. There were basically two main controls - a steering wheel and a accelerator/brake switch. Well, there _were_ others, but these were the only two she’d have to worry about at the moment. But she couldn’t go to full throttle till they were out of the canal or risk a crash.

Shifting the speed switch gently forward, she simultaneously turned the wheel to pull them out and face more toward the open sea. The sound and buzz of blaster shots around her caused her to gasp. They were now being fired upon; behind her, she could hear Cassian shooting.

“Hold on!” she called, looking behind her for a split second, and leaning forward to brace herself as she moved the accelerator forward. The boat _shot_ forward faster than she would have even guessed- the Imperial technology was clearly superior to what she’d had experience with, and she had to pull it back a bit because she felt as if she might fly out at this pace. She looked behind her again; Cassian was plastered to the corner of the craft, holding white knuckled onto the edge with his free hand, his other holding his blaster to his chest. Already his angular face was soaked with sea spray.

But the island was quickly receding behind them, they’d made it far out of the canal, the troopers way out of sight. They soon had left the shallow sand shelf around the island and made it the deeper ocean, which was still highly tranquil considering. She wanted to ask if Cassian was alright but the sound of the boat at full speed was too loud to be heard over. And there was no time to slow down now. They were shooting out into the open sea and a new worry was setting in; the question of their destination.

Jyn pushed up the speed again, and the boat peeled smoothly through the waves, avoiding any of choppiness or rocking. The wind at her face sprayed her hair with sea salt and plastered it back against her head. She heard Cassian moving behind her, and he, keeping low to avoid being knocked back, joined her at the control panel. He held onto the front, wiping water off his face with his free hand.

“Are we being pursued?” she asked loudly over the sound of them rushing across the water, keeping her eyes on the horizon for signs of other islands.

“I don’t think so,” Cassian shouted back in reply. “But I can’t imagine they would take this theft lightly - they’ll know someone escaped.”

Jyn meditated on this fact.

“All the more reason to get as far away as we can,” she replied after a moment, squinting at the horizon again, before looking at Cassian, suddenly remembering his condition.

“And you’re hurt… we need to stop soon and look at it.”

He shook his head dismissively but she could see the burn in his now nearly see through shirt, and the water was causing the dried blood on his hairline to start watering back down his face. And he was straining to stand up straight.

“I’ve been in worse,” he replied.

“Go lie down in the back,” Jyn instructed.

“I need to keep watch.”  
  
He was looking at her again with those dark eyes, seawater dripping off the angles in his deadly serious face. Jyn pressed her lips together in concern, knowing he was right.

“Alright, but try to sit at least.”

He gave a solemn nod and bent down again to move gingerly to the stern again. Jyn shivered as the wind whipped at her wet clothes. She allowed herself to turn back one more time and look at the island, getting smaller and smaller in the distance as they rumbled away.

At this point, she could only assume that most members of the rag tag crew of _Rogue One_ was dead. She hated this fact, being back at her old station - not knowing who was alive and who was dead and who she’d ever see again. As she watched the island recede again, she turned her gaze for a moment at Cassian, who’d sat back down, holding onto the boat’s hull with one hand and his head turned back to watch for pursuers. He turned his head and met her gaze for a moment before looking back behind them again. For once, his steely eyes had looked weary as it met hers. She could only wonder if he was too thinking about everyone who they had probably lost.

However, he made up the distinct difference of this situation from all the other ones she had been in that ended badly. For once, Jyn Erso was not alone or abandoned or forced to stake it out on her own. This was certainly the most precarious situation she’d ever had to deal with, but she did not have to do it alone.

She just wasn’t sure yet if this would make it better or worse.


	2. Landing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thank you to everyone who has left kudos/feedback so far! I'm glad people are enjoying this concept. Here's another chapter for you. Let me know what you're thinking.

Chapter 2 \- Landing 

The sun was starting to get low on the horizon, and Jyn Erso was starting to worry. She and Cassian had been riding the stolen Imperial power boat for several hours now, all one direction - away from the base island which had nearly spelled out their deaths. Yet there had not been much of anything in sight since. Directly ahead Jyn could see nothing but open ocean. Feeling the intense weariness of standing so long, shivering in her wet clothes whilst being pounded by the wind, she let the accelerator slide back down until the boat came to a stop and they were simply bobbing in Scarif’s seemingly endless calm waters. Completely unused to the feeling of stillness after so long, Jyn paused with her hands on the controls. She pushed back her damp loose bits of hair and stood, breathing in the clean, clear sea air and listening to the stillness. Not a single sound of an explosion in sight, or the smell of burning metal and flesh… just a slightly eerie peacefulness. Feeling the weariness in her bones, however, she sat down on one of the benches and pressed her face to her palms. Thirst grated at the back of her throat, reminding her that there was still much work to do before they could really be safe.

Straightening back up, she looked over at Cassian, who had lay down on the bench he’d previously been sitting in, long resigned to being soaked to the bone in sea spray. He rested one arm over his eyes, presumably having fallen asleep from the exhaustion of his injuries. Jyn watched his chest gently rise and fall as he breathed, his wet clothing clinging to his lean, tall frame. She remembered how she felt the first time she thought he was gone, in the data vaults when he had been hit. She suddenly looked away, hating reliving it, and reached into her shirt, pulling out her kyber crystal necklace and looking down at it. She stared off into the flat horizon of the sea, pressing her palm closed and feeling the edges of the crystal dig into her hand.

“ _I'm one with the Force; the Force is with me..._ ” she murmured to herself, repeating the mantra of the blind warrior, Chirrut, whose fate she was oblivious to. Perhaps he was alive too, thinking the same thing. She closed her eyes and said it to herself, again and again.

“ _I'm one with the Force; the Force is with me. I’m one with the Force; the Force is with me…_ ”

When she opened her eyes again, she blinked in surprise, because sitting on the edge of the hull of the craft, across from her, was a small bird with a grey and white plumage and a orange beak. It turned its head, looking at Jyn, and gave a squawk before pushing off and flying away. Jyn blinked again, considering the ramifications of this brief occurrence.

Beside her she heard Cassian shift. He gave a small groan and pressed his hand to his forehead, muttering something under his breath. Jyn got to her feet, a renewed determination within her.

“How are you doing?” she asked, taking a step toward him and peering down at him in concern. Cassian raised his head slightly, coming more fully awake and taking note of the fact that they weren’t moving.

“Why are we stopped?” he asked, squinting up at her. Gingerly, he raised himself up by the arm, and Jyn helped him to an upright position which he murmured a thanks for.

“To rest for a moment,” Jyn explained. “How is it - how do you feel?”

She realized her hand was lingering on his shoulder where she knew his blaster burn was and quickly pulled it away. He pushed his head through his salty hair.

“Weary, but I’ve been worse. What about you?”  
  
He looked up at Jyn, who sat down in the bench adjacent to him.

“I’m alright.” she replied, and then paused. “We need to keep going, I just saw a bird. And a bird means we must be near land.”

Cassian pondered that for a moment, looking out at the sea somewhat morosely.

“Well, there is not much we can do out here, except burn in the sun and die of thirst. And I can’t shake the feeling that this is too easy.”

Jyn blinked silently, internally agreeing with him.

“We’ll have to keep on the lookout,” she decided. “And yes, if we don’t find water soon….”

The statement hung uncomfortably in the air. Cassian rolled up the wet sleeves of his shirt and nodded to himself, before eyeing the control panel.

“Let me steer for a while,” he told Jyn. “You take over lookout.”

“You couldn’t stand the last I checked,” she countered. 

“I’ve had some sleep and you’ve done so much more. I can do it fine.”

Taking a moment to contemplate just how tired her feet felt and her sore ankle, Jyn gave a nod. Cassian got to his feet slowly, she saw his legs shake slightly before he got his proper stance back, and he moved toward the front of the boat. She looked at his shoulder where the skin was red and puckered, purple in some places, and winced.

“I have some medical things in my vest,” she said, as he got the bearings of the controls. “As soon as we… when we get somewhere we can stop you need to mend up that shoulder.”

She realized there was now saltwater in the wound which must have been extremely painful, and reasoned that he was clearly extremely adept at hiding his pain. It made a certain degree of sense, given his background, of which he’d let on simultaneously very much and nothing at all.

Sitting back in the bench Cassian had previously occupied, Jyn looked back out, scanning the horizon with the falling sun for any signs of Imperial pursuit. But as Cassian had noted previously, there was none. Everything felt as if they had stumbled into another world - a peaceful, tropical world. Jyn leaned over the side of the boat and brushed her fingers in the water, which felt calm and warm. It did indeed feel too easy. Unnerved, she picked up Cassian’s blaster where he’d stowed it under the seat and held it to her chest, looking out.

“I don’t like the look of those,” Cassian called, a few minutes after they had gotten back underway. He reached out an arm and pointed into the distance to their left, where what looked like heavy rolling storm clouds were gathering. Jyn gripped the blaster tighter and looked apprehensively toward them.

“I guess there isn’t much we can do,” she replied. She picked up her vest from the boat ground and slung it back over her shoulders, checking and rezipping her pockets to make sure the bandages were dry. Over her shoulder, sunset was starting, and if there was anything she wanted less, it was being caught out in the open ocean without the light of the sun, and a storm looming.

-

“ _Come up here!_ ” Jyn heard Cassian shout. She had been sitting in the back, grasping for dear life to the hull of the ship. The storm they had seen earlier in the distance had begun gently, with just drizzling rain, but before long it was a gale. The seas that Jyn had previously remarked on being so calm were now pounding the sides of their boat, and the darkness made it hard to tell when a large wave was coming. The Imperial boat had draining vents on the inside to keep it from taking on too much water, but Jyn knew they would be pointless against a capsize or a _really_ massive wave.

Cassian had been holding on too up front front, attempting to keep them on some kind of course. He was holding on with one hand now, turned half to Jyn, reaching out the other in her direction. Jyn, holding onto the edge of the hull and keeping her knees bent for stability, grabbed his hand. She made her way forward, pushing against the tempest that was jerking the boat every few seconds and the buckets of rain coming from above. She had been filling the stolen canteen with what was falling and they had been taking turns drinking from it.

“Hold on to me,” Cassian instructed her, loudly over the gale, and pulled an arm around her torso. Compared to him Jyn knew she was slight and had a lot less weight to anchor herself, so she likewise pulled herself toward his body, wrapping her arm around his waist, and grabbing the console with her other free hand. Jyn did not even have the time to think about the fact that she had not let someone hold her this closely in an extremely long time.

“I don’t know how much longer of this this thing can take!” she exclaimed loudly, noticing how much water they were taking on. The wind was blowing directly at them, plastering their hair backwards and pulling at their soaking clothing. Cassian said nothing for a while, his hardened face still looking forward into the darkness. If there were visible stars and moon(s) on this planet, they couldn’t be seen through the storm clouds above. The occasional lightning strike brought the greatest light.

“If we die out here,” Cassian said suddenly to her. “I am glad that the Empire didn’t get to me first!”  
  
Jyn looked up at him, the rain falling on her face and into her eyes. His expression was stern and determined as ever, and she knew he was completely serious about this. In the darkness the angles in his face and neck and collar bones looked even sharper, rivulets of water running down them into his shirt.

“Dying running away,” she shouted back, brows furrowed. “I don’t know if I wouldn’t prefer the other option!”  
  
“At least they never got the satisfaction of taking me down!”

Suddenly, despite the chaos of the moment, she was struck with how much braver he was than her. Sure she was bold, and she had lived most of her life on her own terms and been proud of it, but he knew true sacrifice. He’d gotten onto her side for the invasion without her even having to ask. And what had she ever done, aside from this one thing?

“We did our job,” she replied. “We got the plans through, and I couldn’t have done it without you! The Rebellion lives on because of us!”

She felt his grip on her torso tightening, but perhaps that was because of a extra strong wind gust that caused them to have to bend their heads. As she did, Jyn got smacked clear in the face with something light and floppy that definitely felt different than water, but it stung because of the speed at which the wind had thrown it at her.

Bewildered, she pulled whatever it was off her chest. A leaf, a palm leaf. She looked up at Cassian, surprise in her eyes. A leaf meant trees, which meant land. As she did, another leaf flew in and hit Cassian on the shoulder. But before they could make much sense of it, a completely massive and unexpected wave hit the side of the boat. It created a jolt of motion so heavy that it knocked Cassian and Jyn off their feet, and the rest of the wave pushing against the hull flipped the boat clean over, dragging them beneath the water. It happened so fast they barely had time to register it - one moment they were standing, the other they were in the water. The impact ripped them from each other, though they stretched their arms out and reached wildly for one another in the tempest waters. Saltwater filled Jyn’s lungs and choked out a scream at the shock of being thrown under, and she gasped beneath the black water, kicking up with all her might till her head cleared the surface.

Attempting to tread water in the churching waves, her flailing arm hit something hard, and realized it was the hull of the overturned Imperial boat. She kicked and pulled herself through the water with all her might, throwing her arms over the curved hull for support. There was not much to hold onto and she felt it wouldn’t last long, as she coughed up salt water.

“ _Cassian!_ ” she screamed into the black void, though there was nothing whatsoever to be heard. Another massive wave almost sent her under again and she gasped for air, holding onto the boat hull for dear life. Jyn looked from left to right, seeing nothing but rolling water and blackness, adrenaline pumping and air barely making it to her lungs as she coughed up more water, which was coming from every direction. _This truly could be the last thing she would be see_ , a thought way at the back of her mind sprouted up to say. The notorious Jyn Erso, dying an anonymous death at sea, completely alone as she had almost always been. Her arms were starting to truly struggle to hold on, and a soft lulling desire in her head coaxed closer to darkness, to let go of the boat and just let unconsciousness envelop her.

Jyn was seconds from letting go when she felt a jerk at the back of her vest - something was pulling her. She felt it, distinctly, an arm slide around her waist. It pulled her away and she let go of the boat, not that her arms were going to last much longer. She let the arm pull her, just attempting to keep her head above water and kick for dear life.

And suddenly, there it was, something she thought she would never feel again, solid ground beneath her feet. Soft ground, definitely, a soft sand bottom - but ground. Jyn’s feet touched it and she began to stumble across it, but another wave crashed over her head, causing her to lose her footing and get tossed against the sand, pulling her away from whatever was holding her. Whatever it was did not give up - she felt her body being lifted; no longer did she have any strength to help herself, but she stayed conscious. She felt someone’s arms under her knees, and suddenly she was lifted completely from the water. Only dimly aware she was being carried, she felt whoever was holding her trudge across some kind of land as she coughed up water, her sopping clothes dragging down on her chest and cutting down on her ability to breathe.

The last thing she was aware of was feeling her body hit the ground again, the still, solid ground, and she rolling over onto her stomach, her lungs forcibly expelling more water, before her cheek hit the sand again and everything went to black.

-

When Jyn woke up again, it took her several moments to become aware of all the facts of her situation. The first thing she was aware of was that her face was resting on sand, and the second was that every part of her body hurt. She was sore beyond anything she’d ever felt, and it was a kind of painful weariness that felt like it was overtaking every cell. A short groan made its way from her lips as she tested moving her limbs. Soreness, pain, aching, this was all she was clear about.

Her mouth tasted awful; salty and gritty, and she felt the grains of sand rubbing against her skin almost everywhere, in her damp clothes and shoes in in her hair. She gingerly raised a hand and scraped the fine coating of sand that had accumulated on her cheek away. Reaching up, she touched her hair, which felt drier but extremely gritty and matted with the texture of the salt that had dried in it.

This was all while she was still lying on her stomach in the sand, and she registered the sound of footsteps coming toward her. She gasped, remembering.

“Cassian!” she said, rolling over and boosting herself up on an elbow, a motion that did no favors for her aching limbs, and looked around.

“I’m here,” his voice said from behind her. Jyn turned her head and saw him approaching from behind, a tall form that stooped down at her side, one knee raised and one down. He put something down in the sand beside him and helped her to sit up, removing his hands as soon as she was stable.

“Drink,” he instructed, passing her the canteen. Jyn looked at it, pushing matted hair away from her face. The back of it had gotten loose from the usual bun she had it in.

“Where did you get this?” she choked.

“It’s clean, don’t worry- rainwater pooled from a leaf.”  
  
Jyn drank without hesitation, emptying most of it into her mouth and pouring some on her hands before scrubbing her face. The cool freshness of it felt pleasant on her dried, sand crusted skin.

“Thank you,” she murmured, feeling her voice coming out more as a croak than usual. Cassian was observing her with his typical furrowed brow, unreadable emotion in his eyes. He looked slightly less of a mess than her, but still weather beaten - the salt and humidity made his hair stick up frizzier and wavier and there was sand around the his beard, and some trapped in his eyebrows. His clothes were as ragged and dirty as her own, but he still managed to maintain the sort of mysterious handsomeness; the inquisitive, serious, rugged quality as she’d observed in him before.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” he said softly after a moment, slinging his wrist over his knee.

“You…. pulled me from the storm,” Jyn replied after a pause, slowly and slightly breathlessly, as she was putting the pieces together in her head. “I was about to drown.”

Cassian looked down then out into the distance, brows still furrowed, not answering. She followed his gaze; he was looking out at the ocean. They themselves were situated just at the start of the beach, under the tree cover. The sand stretched sloping downhill before them, soft and white and the shallow waves of teal sea rolled gently in below. There were some signs of the previous night’s devastation scattered around, various loose leaves and plant parts that had been ripped away and some sticks that had washed up at the high water line, but aside from that, it was as calm and idyllic a place as could be found.

“You got us off the other island,” Cassian said, finally, before turning back to look at her. “So I think we both owe each other our lives, and we’re even.”  
  
Jyn looked down into her lap, pondering the reality of the situation at hand. Her next statement came without much thought, just sort of slipped out.

“Good, I don’t like debts.”  
  
Neither of them laughed or smiled. She looked over at Cassian, wildly trying to remember what he looked like smiling, she’d seen but a few glimpses of warmth in his dark eyes back at the Rebel headquarters when he’d said, “ _Welcome home._ ” and made her feel a pang in her heart, a shot of warmth she was not used to. And then staring into his eyes once he’d saved her, his face bathed in red light, looking down at hers, as he slung his arm around her shoulder and leaned on her for strength. An intense warmth had grown between their bodies that they neither was used to. _What had he been thinking?_ Jyn was struggling to remember what had been going through her own head.

“I can’t be sure we’re safe here but I… am glad we found it,” Cassian muttered suddenly, squinting up at the clear blue sky.

Jyn nodded, pulling up her knees to her chest and tucking back more hair. It was certainly not the worst place in the Galaxy to be stranded… if storms like the previous night’s were uncommon. She breathed the sea air in deeply, keenly aware again of her soreness and exhaustion. It was compounded by the realization that she had not had anything to eat in quite a long time.

But at least they were alive, and they were together. _Somehow_.

“Me too,” Jyn muttered, looking from side to side at the idyllic appearance of the island she had up until now assumed was deserted, but realized there was no way of actually knowing if this was true at the moment.

“I’m not used to this... quiet.”

Cassian looked at her with a brow raised slightly.

“I don’t do a lot of sitting on beaches myself either,” he said. “Though this place reminds me of… the planet where I was born.”

He looked back into the jungle, the hand he had resting on his knee curling into a loose fist. Jyn was curious but their terse exchange after her father’s demise at the Imperial outpost about loyalties and losing things made her draw the line for herself. If he wasn’t asking about her early life, she would refrain from inquiring about his.

“Well, we’ve got work to do then, don’t we?” Jyn asked, resolving to focus on the main issue of the moment - _survival_. Cassian left his reverie and met her gaze again, his face again showing his typical grave seriousness. Despite relative youth, Jyn noted, he had pronounced worry lines in his face, between his brows and along the sides of his mouth. A product of his position, she thought darkly, like of hers. He took a deep breath and gave a nod.

“So we do.”

Looking at him, Jyn once again flashed back to the previous evening. It had been some miracle that he was able to find her in the gale, and pull her out and lift her from the ocean, at the end. She thought of how close she had been to letting go and allowing the darkness to envelop her and shivered. The extent to which they had gotten tangled in each others’ lives in what was just days jarred her, she looked away, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the realization of how inextricably linked they were now. Their dependence on each other from this point on was truly life or death. Jyn had not been used to having to look after or rely on any other person for an extremely long time. And now she had to do it more than she ever had. It was shaking her usual pragmatism and coolness.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said in a small voice, realizing she had not said it yet.

“Thank you for not leaving me on the island,” Cassian replied simply, looking down. They met each other’s gazes again for a moment, settling deeper the realization that now, truly all they had, was each other.


	3. Survival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, thanks for the continued feedback and kudos, I really appreciate it! Leave me some more if you're enjoying this :) For those of you wondering about Cassian's POV, it's coming next chapter so stay tuned... anyway, enjoy this chapter, it's been fun to start amping up the shippiness...

Chapter 3\- Survival

“I’m fine,” Cassian said dismissively, shaking his head. Shortly following their original exchange and a discussion what they had to do next, Jyn had insisted that she take a look at his shoulder. His pain-dismissive tendencies were going to get them in serious trouble some day.

“Just let me check,” she replied, shifting to sit on her knees. “Look, these medical supplies stayed dry, we’re lucky they survived at all. It at least needs to be cleaned.”

Cassian sighed in resignation and shifted so his back was to her. She looked with an internal wince at the burn in his shirt and skin, which was crusted over in died sand and dirt now. It stretched across from his shoulder blade to the outside of his upper arm. She cleared her throat.

“You’ll have to… take your shirt off for a minute,” she instructed, feeling an irrational warmth behind her ears. Cassian said nothing, and hunched his shoulders in slightly as he reached over them to remove his shirt, stiff with sand and salt. Jyn picked up the canteen and gently poured some water over the burn, which was now splotches of dark red blister on his light brown skin.

“You’re lucky this was only a graze,” she observed quietly, as she picked up one of the antiseptic pads encased in a grey package, from her lap, and used her teeth to rip it open.

“That was not my first time being shot with a blaster,” he replied, not turning his head. Indeed, the closer Jyn looked at the muscular expanse of his tan back and arms, the more she could see evidence of past damage, thin raised scars or the texture of burns many years healed over. Bruises, too, but those were clearly the most recent. Long, broad bruises from his fall, slashing across his back in highly unpleasant colors. Again, clearly much more painful than he let on. She unfolded the antiseptic wipe, thinking silently of what could have caused the various injuries on him.

Jyn paused and reached out, laying a hand lightly on Cassian’s arm below where the scar was to stabilize her movement. Beneath her hand his skin was warm, but he was holding himself stiffly and rigidly, she noticed. Perhaps preparing for the inevitable sting of the antiseptic, or perhaps bristling at her touch… gently as she could, she began to pat the edges of the burn where there was some small open wounds, with the wipe.

It felt foreign to be gently daubing an injury on another person in this way, a more intimate, gentle act than she was used to. She hoped she was doing it right, so unused was she to helping another in this way. She’d spent time patching herself up in various ways in the past, but this was different, of course. Since joining the Rebellion, she was no longer living for just herself, and this act, small but profound, somehow symbolized that for her.

“I think it should be okay,” she said softly, examining her work. Her fingers trailed along his shoulder blade and brushed against where his vertebrae jutted out. She pulled her hands away again, clearing her throat, and got busy folding the spent antiseptic wipe with its package. The back of her neck felt warm again.

“Thank you,” Cassian replied quietly after a pause, pulling his shirt back over his head. “Now we can focus on what’s more important.”  
  
“You’re no use with an nonfunctioning arm.”  
  
Jyn wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard him make a sardonic kind of smirk and get to his feet, and she herself repressed a small smile as she got up, removing her vest. The island was warm and breezy, unlike the climates she was more used to. Everything she was wearing was highly unsuited to the it, though.

“I don’t believe it…” Cassian said, raising his arm to shield his eyes from the sun. “Am I hallucinating, or is that what I think it is out there?”

He pointed to their right at the surf. Indeed, if one did look closer one could see they were breaking somewhat unnaturally a yards out, over some kind of overturned object. Jyn gasped, and they got to their feet, and jogged down to the water’s edge. Indeed, lying halfway submerged in the sand a little bit out was the unmistakable sleek shape of the grey Imperial boat which Jyn had to this moment assumed was somewhere at the bottom of the sea.

“We need to get it out,” she said quickly, looking at Cassian, who nodded and reached down to unlace his boots. She followed suit, and rolled up her pants though she knew her clothes would be soaked again soon. She rose again, tossing her shoes farther up the beach where Cassian had thrown his. He reached over his shoulder and pulled his shirt off again, tossed it away and looked at her.

“Ready?”

Jyn, whose eyes had lingered for a few moments on his muscular torso, quickly forced herself to look up at his serious face and gave a quick nod. The two of them ventured into the surf that splashed at their ankles and calves. It was extremely warm for ocean water, and the sand underneath Jyn’s feet was soft. Her limbs still felt like a droid’s needing oil, but there was simply not enough time to sleep for many hours like she wanted to. The boat had _parts_ \- metal and fabric they could salvage from that could possibly be the difference between life and death. It was vital and unspokenly understood: getting this boat back on shore before the tide or another storm carried it away for good.

They made their way over to the overturned boat, the water coming up to about Jyn’s waist. The gentle waves came up every so often, washing over her stomach. From this vantage point she looked back at the land they’d crashed onto the previous evening. An imposing wall of jungle faced them just beyond the sandy beach, and there was no end to the land in sight. Just calm beach beach and thick tree cover for miles. She wasn’t sure if this vast empty expanse was a blessing (from the hiding-from-the-Empire angle) or a curse (the getting-rescued-by-the-Resistance angle)

“Alright,” Cassian called to her from the other side of the boat just beneath the water, pushing a hand through his hair. “I think if we can lift from below we can use the water to our advantage.”

“If isn't dug in too far….” Jyn muttered, looking down through the water, the surface of which the boat just broke. On Cassian’s cue, she lowered herself, the water instantly sloshing her shirt and hair again - she wasn't sure if she remembered what it was like to wear dry clothes. She managed to work her hands underneath the boat’s edge, half buried in sand, and lifted it with a grunt. Cassian had assessed properly; the water did help them keep it aloft but it was still extremely heavy. As they dragged into shallower and shallower waters, Jyn’s arms felt again like they were about to give out. Her sopping clothes were dragging her down and the weight she was carrying was almost too much to bare. Her brows furrowed and she grimaced with the effort, feeling the muscles in her back and arms burning and straining like old elastic.

“Now you go around the front and pull, and I’ll push from the back,” Cassian called, catching Jyn’s eye. She could see how the weight caused the muscles in his arms to bulge, but she couldn’t imagine how much more strength than her at this moment.

They set the boat down just at the edge of the water where the tips of waves rolled in. Jyn, water rolling off her clothing and body with every step, walked around to the front, feeling the dull burning sensation in her upper body but once again pushing away the pain. She dropped to a squat and hooked her hands underneath the overturned bow tip of the craft. Cassian, positioning himself at the other end and bracing his hands against the stern, caught her eye.

“One more push, on my count!” he instructed, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of one large hand and returning to position. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and Jyn gave a nod, bracing for the pain.

Stumbling back but pulling all the same, Jyn closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and pulled with all her might. They moved the load for a few seconds before the effort just became too much for Jyn. Her knees buckled and she had to drop her end of the boat, falling forward onto the sand with her shoulders giving out and hunching in. She breathed in gasps, overcome, unaware of her surroundings until she became aware of motion around her; Cassian bending down before her.

“Jyn, Jyn…” she heard him say, getting down on his knees. She felt him reach out and take hold of her shoulders with his hands. Embarrassed, Jyn met his gaze hesitantly, her ears hot with shame and her brows furrowed. In his eyes she saw something different - genuine concern, his brows knitted as he looked at her.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, wiping a combination of sweat and seawater off her forehead with a hand. “Let’s try again, I-”

“You need to rest,” Cassian interrupted softly, removing his hands from her shoulders. She felt herself missing them there instantly, feeling less grounded without them. “I am the one who should be sorry - I overestimated your strength.”

“I have enough strength,” she retorted quickly, defensively. Jyn had never taken perceived slights against herself well, and frequently was she underestimated due to her size and gender. While she usually was very strong indeed, the action of the previous day, the storm and what they had just done had sapped her of that. Either way she instinctively tried to prove herself by getting to her feet quickly, too quickly, indeed, swaying with a gasp. She had not realized just how weak she actually was.

Cassian was quicker, rising and catching her by the forearms.

“I didn’t mean it like, er, I know you’re strong. I’ve seen you fight, and you got us out, I just mean… you need to rest. And eat.”

“Don’t remind me…” Jyn replied softly, still highly embarrassed and avoiding Cassian’s eye. “Let me just sit down for a few minutes. We need to move this to safety now.”

Challenging her no longer, Cassian let go of Jyn’s arms and she took a few paces away, sitting down and hugging her knees, looking into the ocean. After going off to retrieve the canteen to share with her, Cassian sat down beside her, raising one knee and laying an arm across it.

“Are we being reckless by just sitting out here in the open?” Jyn asked in a deadpan, resting her chin on her folded arms. She was thinking of the island behind her, and what could possibly lie deeper in the jungle. She gave it a few moments before allowing herself to look over at Cassian. Her gaze traced the blistered burn that violently interrupted the shiny, tan skin of his arms. He stretched out his legs and lay back in the sand, folding his non burnt arm behind his head and closing his eyes.

“Maybe,” he spoke, finally. “But I don’t see what other choice we have.”

Now that his eyes were closed, Jyn impulsively allowed her gaze to explore what was beside her. Cassian had a muscular frame, but lean, both speaking to his lifestyle as a fighter. He was broad in his shoulders and chest, and his body hair was dark like that on his head and around his jaw. She let her eyes travel back up to the the angles in his collarbones, the bulging of the muscles between his neck and shoulders where he had his arm bent behind his back. His warm toned skin, glistening with seawater, seemed to shine in the bright sun, and Jyn couldn’t help but admit that he was actually _beautiful_. It was rare for Jyn, who generally analyzed people more for their tactical abilities first - just part of the life she lived. She was forced to admit, however, Cassian’s physical features to be indicative of his extensive abilities… and physically desirable to herself. She bit her lip and forced herself to look away before he opened his eyes again.

Cassian spoke again after a few moments in which Jyn focused on the sound of the push and pull of the tides.

“The fact is, there could be an Imperial outpost just past these trees. And there could be Imperial ships searching for us now. Or they could think we’re dead and this could be completely deserted. Our best chance is to stay low but…”

“Keep ourselves alive,” Jyn finished. Beside her Cassian nodded.

“Right. And finding food is priority one… and more water.”  
Jyn sighed, knowing they were accomplishing nothing just sitting here, tired as she was. Hunger was panging at her stomach and their canteen was almost empty.

“Let’s try moving it again,” Jyn said, looking over at the boat. “We should try to get it under the trees.”

Cassian rose from his lying down position, looking at her with his brows knitted.

“Are you sure?” he asked genuinely.

Jyn gave a nod, rolling up the wet sleeves of her shirt up her forearms with a new resolve, and got to her feet. Luckily, she did not need help this time, and was able to find her footing without shaking.

“It’ll be less resistance if we flip it over,” Cassian observed, walking over to the boat and squatting down on one side. Jyn joined him and as one they gave a great heave, sending the boat back right side up, where it sat in the sand. The control pad was coated and choked in sand and pieces of seaweed, as was much of the rest of it.

“Well, I don’t see it ever working again….” Cassian said as he threw a leg over the side, climbing into it and examining the control panel. Jyn nodded, crossing her arms and slowly circling around to the back. She tilted her head and furrowed her brows, noticing something she hadn’t before.

“Look,” she spoke up, joining Cassian by climbing in and bending over the back of the boat behind the last seat. “There’s a little keyhole here and a latch…”

She slid the latch out with a finger and gave it a pull but as expected: locked. She swore under her breath. Of course, in Jyn’s world, nothing was _really_ locked, but one needed the proper tools.

“Would this help?” Cassian’s voice asked behind her. She turned, finding him holding out a pocket utility knife and a set of lockpicks. Jyn blinked in surprise and nodded quickly.

“I didn’t know you had those,” she said, turning back to the latch and bending over the lock.

“They were in my pants pocket - they always are. Might rust now but…”

There was a click and Jyn restrained herself from making a triumphant noise. They had no idea what was in this thing, if anything at all. Pausing to put down the lockpicking supplies, Jyn flipped what she now realized was a hatch door. It opened into a small square holding area which had somehow stayed watertight through everything that had happened.

 _“Provisions_ ,” Jyn said breathlessly, noting several packages wrapped tightly in shiny, dark grey wrappings, packed against the edge of the hatch. She scooped them into her arms and closed the hatch again, quickly climbing off the boat again and laying them in the sand. Every fibre of her being prayed that one of these contained some kind of food.

Her hopes were dashed but there was use to be found within. There was another empty canteen and a leather sack that she hoped they could use to transport water. There were two large black blankets rolled up tightly in another, with a few sets of toothbrushes and bars of soap. Yet another pack contained some replacement parts for the boat, new knobs for the control panel and a little tub of some kind of foul smelling industrial paste - little use there, but the best thing she found was in the last package that she earnestly ripped open.

“ _Clothes!_ ” Jyn blurted out excitedly. Behind her she heard Cassian jump out and join her in looking at the provisions. She separated the clothing, finding three pairs of identical linen pants and shirts, except one was white, one was light grey and the other a dark russet red. Each had an Imperial logo patch on the side of one of the arms. Jyn inserted a nail under the edge of one and gave a hard rip, the patch coming off with a satisfying _shunk_.

“Right…” she muttered, giving the same treatment to the other two shirts and feeling a certain degree of principle in it. Before this, she wouldn’t of cared under whose standard she was walking so long as she was doing it on her own terms. But now it was personal.

“I’ve never been so thankful to get clothes,” Cassian muttered, airing exactly what Jyn was too thinking, and grabbing the red shirt and the grey pants. Jyn grabbed the white shirt and the red pants and got to her feet. They looked at each other awkwardly for a moment before turning their backs to each other and stripping off their remaining sopping wet, crusty clothes and sliding on the thin, light articles Jyn had just discovered. She looked down at her body as she removed her old clothes, noticing how beat up it really looked. There were bruises everywhere, but she tried to not focus on them at the time.

The shirt and pants were many times too big for her small frame - she pulled the drawstring on the pants excessively till they could sit properly around her waist, and tied the ends of the shirt in the front so it wouldn’t billow so much. The sleeves she folded and rolled up. Luckily, they seemed more suited to the Scarif’s warm climate, being lighter and more breathable than her old attire.

She turned back to Cassian, who seemed to be waiting with his back turned with his old pants slung over his arm; she was grateful for the privacy.

“Coast is clear,” Jyn said after a pause, leaning down to roll up the legs of the pants. It the first time in probably 24 hours that she wasn’t wearing clothes that weren’t wet, damp, salty, sandy, or some combination of those things, and it felt extremely nice. He turned, and after she finished haphazardly rolling up her pant legs, she thought she could detect a hint of amusement sparkling in his eyes, though he kept his face bare.

“Well, they fit you fine,” she said coolly, eyeing him up and down, before brusquely picking up her old clothing and folding it up. Once they had left the rest of the provisions with their other clothes, they returned to the task of moving the boat onto higher ground. Taking turns pulling and pushing, they inched the craft up the beach, through the sand. It was arduous and painful and by the time they got it up under the tree cover, they could hardly stand.

Jyn flopped into the sand on her shoulder when it was done, her breaths heavy with exhaustion. She rolled onto her back, resting a hand on her rapidly falling and rising chest. Water, she knew she needed water. Getting gracelessly to her feet, she stumbled over to where they’d left their provisions, and lifted the canteen. It was empty. She cursed, swinging the strap around her shoulder and picking up her boots to put back on. Her throat burned and her arms felt like lead, she frustratedly pushed her hair back from her face as she struggled with the fine motor work of tying the laces. She put her vest back on over her shoulders, appreciating its weight.

“We need more water,” she called out weakly to Cassian, who was lying on his side a few feet from the boat, he too not being able to muster the strength to stand. But he didn’t move. Brows furrowing in concern, Jyn slung the canteen’s strap over her shoulder and trudged up where he lay. He was rolled over onto one shoulder, curled slightly into himself, with one arm stretched loosely ahead, and his shoulders were rising and falling gently with slow breaths.

Jyn realized he had actually fallen asleep right then and there from sheer exhaustion. She gave a small sigh, allowing herself to fall back onto her rear with her knees raised before her, her arms falling weakly into her lap. A moment later, she picked up a hand, pressing it tightly into her eyes. Warm tears of frustration had begun to well up there and she held her hand tightly across her eyes like she could somehow force the tears back up, force them to go away. But they kept coming, till she had to wipe them off her cheeks with her sleeve and sniffle like a little girl.

She just felt _so desperately hopeless_ , more than she had in so long. The realization of the unlikelihood of their survival much less their rescue, a thought she had been pushing away up till that point, was suddenly overtaking her. _How would they ever get off?_ The Empire had a shield and a base, the Resistance's forces had only been able to get through by force. They were so vastly outnumbered, too. And how could any ship spot them, so small, from above, when there was an entire planet of islands of pure hostile territory? That is, if they weren’t already _on_ hostile territory. The profound ridiculousness of their rescue smacked at Jyn, already physically weak and emotionally so as well, from the upheavals of the last few days.  

She felt as if she was cracking at the seams, seams she had worked so hard to keep tightly sewn for years and years. More and more tears fell from her cheeks as she sat, hunched in on herself; pure physical desperation.

“ _Jyn…_?” Cassian’s soft voice said from beside her, startling her. Jyn blinked, hastily wiping her face and eyes with her sleeves.

“I’m going to get more water,” she said quickly, avoiding his gaze, embarrassed and wondering how much he’d heard. She struggled to her knees.

“Wait, wait,” Cassian interjected, quickly rising to a seated position and reaching out to touch her on the arm. Jyn stopped, turning her head away again and rubbing her eyes again with her shirt.

“What?” she spat, still not meeting his gaze, one of her hands resting on the canteen.

“You just… are you alright?”

Jyn paused, biting her lower lip, and settled down to sit on her knees. She took a steadying breath and looked back at him.

He had removed his hand from her arm and let it sit in the sand, and he was peering at her with concern in his eyes, his brows knitted as they so frequently were. When he looked at her like this the angles in his face seemed softer than their usual imposing, stern sharpness. He usually had a expression on that one looked at and resolved that they didn’t want to cross him; dark eyes concealing secrets, lips tight with few extraneous words falling out. But with this concern in his eyes brought out a different side Jyn wasn't used to.

“I’m sorry for falling asleep,” he said supplemented, then stammered. “I didn’t, I mean, it was only…”

“It’s fine. We both need sleep desperately. And water, that’s what I was about to go get.”

Jyn saw Cassian’s eyes flick to the neck and lower sleeves of her shirt, damp with her tears.

“Momentary weakness,” she mumbled as some kind of pathetic explanation. He looked at her with a different emotion now, a kind of sadness, a weariness, and pushed a hand through his hair.

“I feel… very similar too, don’t worry,” he said after a moment. They sat this way for a moment, both looking away and sharing in their silent desperation. Cassian, however, reached out and placed a hand onto Jyn’s shoulder, forcing her to look back at him. They held eyes for a moment as he seemed to think of what to say. The pressure of his large hand was light but warm, a small but decidedly comforting motion.

“I won’t die out here,” Jyn blurted out, and bit her lip. Cassian blinked, looking surprised.

“I was going to say, ‘I won’t let us die out here’...” he began, the corner of his mouth flicking slightly up. “I guess we’re thinking along the same lines.”

Jyn looked down at her lap and blinked, struck by the moment. She slowly reached up across her chest and placed her hand over his that sat on her shoulder. Compared to his, hers were small and fair. Her fingers reached over the back of his hand, fingertips sliding gently across the knuckles. She turned her head, her cheek brushing his outstretched arm, to look at the way their hands looked atop each other’s, then peered up Cassian. His eyes were lingering on the same thing she had just been looking at herself. They quickly relinquished their grap on each other, both silently pondering the moment they had just shared.

“Well… good,” Jyn said after a moment, her neck feeling warm. “I’m glad we are.” Her eyes still stung slightly with the tears from before, but she let her lips slide into a small smile. Cassian’s head was tilted down but he raised his eyes, returning hers with a tiny smile of his own that caught her off guard. She blinked and looked away, raising herself back up and getting to her feet, the image of his smile still lingering in her head.

“I’m going to see if there’s any more rain water,” she said, holding up the canteen. “Can you see if there’s anything we can salvage from the inside of the boat? We’re going to need anything and everything of use.”

Cassian nodded as he got up, brushing sand off his clothes and hair.

“Stay close, if you can.” he said after a pause, then looked at her with his furrowed brow back.

“And…. scream if anything.”

Jyn nodded quickly. The moment of tenderness had passed and they had to focus now on the crucial tasks at hand. But as she walked away back closer to the trees and down the beach, she reached up and let her fingers brush over her shoulder where his hand had been.

And Cassian, behind her, running a hand through his hair and down the side of his long face, stopped to watch her retreat.


	4. Food and Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays everyone :) A nice long chapter for you as a present!! I had a lot of fun with this one, I hope you do too. As always, please leave kudos and especially comments, I love hearing the feedback!

Chapter 4 \- Food and Water

While digging around the waterlogged Imperial powerboat that had somehow saved himself and Jyn in several different ways, Cassian Andor was trying not to be distracted by a number of sensations and thoughts. Some were physical - the burning still voraciously present in his injured shoulder, not to mention the pangs of pain and soreness that affected the rest of his lean frame. The bruises on his back, he felt them every time he slouched or lay or swiveled. The cut in his hairline stung like pin pricks. Putting too much weight on his left leg caused it to throb. Miscellaneous other muscles ached: he felt like he’d been pummeled with bricks when he’d woken that morning. Nothing was improved by the waves of hunger passing every so often through his torso, or the rest he badly needed: that he’d fallen asleep so quickly just lying on the sand was indicative of that. 

But he had gotten good over the years at pushing away thoughts of pain, and hiding weakness. The less people knew your weak spots, the better. The less they knew your capacity for getting hurt, the better; this is what he’d lived by. Plus he’d suffered enough injuries- broken bones, blaster burns, scrapes and cuts of various depths - that he wasn’t a stranger to pain and was felt he could effectively work despite it. He’d been bored half to death lying in recovery beds in enough med bays in his time to know getting back on your feet quickly had benefits.

The previous day too, everything he’d suffered; he did not know if was possible to have been in more pain than he had been then after he’d been shot, pulling himself up the databank ladder with his upper torso feeling as if it was on fire, lifting himself with throbbing in his back and limbs so great it felt like it was causing his vision to blur. The aches of this day were nothing compared to that. He struggled to remember his own mindset in those moments, when he knew that Jyn was trying to get to the top of the dish tower and evade the Imperial officer in white. 

_ The plans. Jyn. The plans. Jyn. The plans. Jyn…. _

He truly could not tell now what was motivating him more to get up that ladder. He knew she was in danger and he had to try to help because of  _ the plans  _ she had clipped to her belt that they had all risked their lives for… or was he filled more with the need to know she was alive, to help her if her life was at risk?

Subconsciously, Cassian’s brows fell into a furrow as he worked. He was using one of the extensions of his multi tool to work off the screws of the boat’s console, and when it was free, he tossed aside the last screw and lifted the front panel with a small grunt, exposing a sea of wires and machinations that he immediately started to paw through, wishing he had a better source of light. He suddenly realized how much he wished Kaytoo was there to help, remembering with a stab of sadness the enormous, mouthy droid’s fate. Irritating as he could be, they’d built a good partnership since he’d been reprogrammed and assigned to Cassian. Working with a droid who was nothing if not brutally honest had its benefits, too, certain ones that would be lacking if he had a human partner.

And he was sadly reminded of the human cost of the other day’s mission. How many they lost… some Cassian considered friends (because there were very few of those), and if not friends, valued much as fighters and comrades... he did not know but there was no way it wasn’t a great number. The rebellion probably lost more good fighters and leaders that day then they had in a long time. His fingers fumbled as he tinkered with the wiring, suddenly slammed with the thought. He suddenly felt like he’d seen Jyn feel like just a short time ago. Realizing his hands were shaking and he was unable to get them to do what he wanted, he pulled them out, leaning back against the side of the hull. He looked down at his palms, slowly squeezing them into fists and slackening them again, and pressed them over his face, steadying his breathing.

When he’d woken earlier from his few unsanctioned moments of sleep he had been perplexed by the sound, the very soft kind of sniffle that he was unused to hearing. Only till he reached up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and squinted up at the figure beside him did he understand what was going on. Jyn, her small frame closed in on itself and she using her wrists to wipe her cheeks, was  _ crying _ , very softly, something he had seen from her before but in quite a different context. When he’d pulled her, twice, from Jehta and her father’s Imperial research facility, he’d seen the tears glistening on her cheeks but she’d gotten herself back up quickly enough, and there was clear cause: the deaths of father and mentor. Here she was just crying from... frustration, sadness, hopelessness? The same things Cassian was struggling with right then.

He had been struck deeply by the sound and the sight of her tears, felt a sudden wild urge to get up and place his arm round her shoulders, and let her wrap hers around his chest. He wanted to just hold her for her sake and his own, a feeling he felt with close to extreme infrequency. And he’d… held her more times in the last few days than he’d held anyone in quite a long time. He’d let her body take some of his weight back in the Imperial base elevator, and he’d remembered looking down into her eyes, something unspoken passing between them that now he struggled to remember. And he’d held onto her on the boat during the gale, for safety definetly, but he’d reached out and pulled her toward him for comfort too. Cassian truly thought they might die right there. When he looked down into her rain drenched face at that moment when the sea slammed their ship relentlessly and there was no land in sight, there was something else he wanted to do. Desperately, brazenly, as he thought death was imminent, to lean down and….

“Did you find anything?”

The sudden call of Jyn’s voice behind him caused Cassian to jump slightly. He quickly turned around, holding his hand over his eyes to block out the sun and scan for her arrival. She was walking down out of the trees, he wondered embarrassedly how long she'd seen him standing there, pressing his palms over his eyes and not working. 

He watched her approach, wearing her weather beaten but functional utility vest over the too-large Imperial clothes that she’d made fit her slight frame slightly better by tying and rolling them at the ends. She’d pulled her hair, coarse with salt and sand like his own, back into a plait, and looked much more like she was when he first met her - tough, reserved, all business - than the vulnerable, teary eyed person he’d comforted minutes ago. He remembered again how her small fair hand felt on top of his: warm. 

Once Jyn was close enough, she held out one of their canteens, barely half filled with water, to him. The teary pink tone in her intelligent looking green eyes had almost completely receded now.

“Sort of,” Cassian replied once he’d finished off what was inside, dry throat feeling mercifully mollified. He explained how he thought they would be able to to use some of the wiring as ties for things like a shelter, how some of the small internal metal sheets could be bent to roughly the shapes of bowls and the like to hold things, how together they could probably loosen the panels that made up the reinforced hull and take them for their strength and durability. 

Jyn nodded, looking down at the loose parts he’d laid in the sand. 

“That’s good,” she muttered, resting a hand on her hip as she inspected it. “I did manage to find a spring but… I’ll need help carrying the sack. And we’ll need to make a fire to boil the water… just in case.”

Cassian gave a sigh of relief and threw his leg over the side of the boat’s hull, disembarking to fetch the sack. He suddenly realized he had not given much thought to what could be lurking in the jungle, and made a mental note to think about fabricating some sort of weapons for them. The lack of pressure on his thigh from his usual blaster holster was definitely unnerving. His one from the other day had been lost in the gale, and would certainly have not worked after the water even if it hadn’t been. 

“Lead the way,” he said, clearing his throat, and gesturing toward the trees, peering ahead uncertainly. In his past he had certainly had to explore places unknown, venture to unfamiliar and unfriendly planets and hide in less than savory places. But then he almost always had a communicator and Kaytoo on standby, Rebellion backup if he really needed it, then. And the Empire could be lurking anywhere out here. 

At least the tropical climate and the vegetation on Scarif reminded Cassian of his home planet, Nahuatla, giving him a somewhat disconcerting but not unwelcome feeling of deja vu. As they began to venture into the woods he was reminded of memories he generally tried to repress, and he focused on following Jyn without tripping over the various roots and low sitting plants. There was no path, they were venturing through dense jungle that resisted the touch of civilization. On Nahuatla people carried long, broad blades with wooden handles with them when venturing into the jungles, using them to slice a path before themselves. He remembered suddenly, the distant memory of the weight of one in his hands…

Tall trees streamed up toward the sky around them, dispersing the light from the sun down to where it was a great deal darker on the forest floor than the beach, and cooler as well. Moisture hung in the air, trapped by the dense greenery; leafy, twisted brown and purple vines wrapped round bigger tree trunks whose branches were high and formed the forest canopy above. Bushes that grew to the height of Cassian’s thighs and waist came in all sorts of dark, earthy colors, brushing him along the leg as he walked. He looked up, examining the gently swaying vines and branches above, knowing that if these jungles were as much like the Nahuatlan jungles as they seemed, there would be fruit up there. But it would not be gotten without climbing. 

“I can hear water,” he remarked after they had walked some ways, and Jyn nodded. 

“There’s a stream up here, just a little farther if I remember…”

Eventually they reached the break in the tree line and pushed aside bushes and branches to see a brook gently winding through the trees. It bounced from rock to rock, twisting toward a bend and away into the darkness of the deeper woods. Farther past them, larger rocks half concealed a part where the stream widened into a deeper pool with a tranquil surface. Cassian latched onto the sight, thinking of the a wash he knew he badly needed to remove what felt like a fine layer of grit and sweat covering his entire body and gumming up his hair. 

“So we can get water from here for drinking,” Jyn explained, bending down over the part of the stream before them. “And use that deeper part of washing clothes…”

“And ourselves,” Cassian remarked, wasting no more time and trudging down to the half concealed deeper area. “Do you still have that soap?”

He walked along the bank and around the large rock, looking over and finding a pleasantly deeper looking spot, vaguely kidney shaped and surrounded by one side with large rocks, and a sandy bank on the other.  _ So much like the secluded forest swimming holes he and his friends would seek out as children.  _ Before it was no longer safe to frolic in that way. He sat down on one of the flat rocks, unlacing his boots and pushing away the memories, instead focusing on relishing the thought of how nice the cool water would feel on his burn and his sore limbs. 

“You’re washing yourself  _ now _ ?” Jyn called from farther up the stream where he had just been.

“It’ll feel a lot better to be clean, I can tell you that. We’re all worn out.”  
  
He looked up at Jyn, who was still standing there yards away, blinking at him.

“Come on,” he encouraged, and realizing how he must have sounded, cleared things up. “Look, I’ll stay over here and turn my back, you stay over there and turn your back…”

He heard her say something under her breath as she came down that he couldn’t hear. 

“Heads up.”

Jyn, now standing at the other side of the bank, held up a bar of the sterile white soap stamped with the Imperial logo that they’d found in the boat, and tossed it across the water to Cassian, who deftly caught it. He quickly turned his back and pulled off his shirt and pants, careful not to scrape too hard against his injuries but eager to get himself washed. 

Stepping back gingerly, he felt his toes sinking into the soft sand and fine pebbles that made up the bottom of the stream, and walked in until the water came up to his chest, a smile coming to his face at the relief of its still coolness on his muscles. Reaching over and splashing it on his shoulder felt almost as good as the burn cream that was stalked in base med bays. He held his nose and close his mouth, bending his knees to sink beneath the surface, eagerly letting the water wash over his face and hair. He let his knees hit the bottom. The gentle rushing sound of the water and the ambient noises of the forest vanished as he came beneath the surface. For a moment he stood this way, submerged beneath the water, eyes closed, in the silence as his hair floated ghostly around his head, wishing for a moment that he could stay there for good. It was the first true peace he had felt for some time. Silence uninterrupted, on his own terms.

When Cassian could no longer hold his breath, he broke the surface again he scrubbed the soap into his hair, working the layer of sand off his scalp and freeing it of itchy salt matting it. He scrubbed his face, clearing the dirt trapped in the beard along his jaw. He dipped his head beneath the water again and shook it out to wash away the remainder of the soap. Looking back at the bar in his hand, he gave a small smile to see that his washing was starting to wear away the Imperial logo stamped in it, blurring its edges. 

“You were right,” Jyn’s voice came from behind him. 

“What?”

Cassian instinctively turned his head, forgetting for a moment about the barrier of privacy they had erected a moment ago. 

“It does feel nice to get clean.”  
  
Jyn did not turn around as she spoke, and Cassian should have turned his head back the moment he realized he had done it on accident, but he stood transfixed for a moment, his eyes on Jyn’s form. She stood a few feet away, the water coming up right over her hips, and tilted her head, working her hair free of its plait. Her body was all gentle curves, delicate in appearance despite how tough he knew she could make herself. In the low, greenish light of the jungle her pale skin seemed to almost glow. His eyes traced along the lines of her back, from the slope of her shoulders and thin arms, to the way her small waist came in, making a gentle hourglass shape, down to where the water met her body and her hips curved out again. She finished her task and shook out her deep colored hair, and he quickly turned back around, feeling his face burning in the shame of intruding on her privacy.

He quickly returned to his washing, pondering embarrassedly what he had just done and seen. It was not that he hadn’t thought of Jyn  _ as a woman  _ before, clearly he had given what he’d wildly wanted to do back on the boat, and it wasn’t like had hadn’t noticed aspects of her appearance: her sharp, inquisitive eyes, her full lips, frequently open just so as she analyzed things. But she’d always been wearing bulky, dark clothes - efficient for fighting and so on, but attire that generally swallowed her frame. He’d never been able to see those curves in her back before, her petite neck, the luminous quality of her bare skin. And he’d not had much time in the chaos since they had met to admire her features like that.

Cassian bit down hard on his lower lip, knowing the foolishness of thinking about these things. He  _ knew _ physical desire was a distraction and tended to let men astray, in fact, he’d seen it and felt it happen. Given that their survival was so precarious and they only had each other, he knew he had to push it away and focus on the tasks at hand. So he tried very hard not to think about the fact that there was a beautiful naked woman several feet away him as he finished up his washing, and tried to devise a strategy for finding food instead. Though he wished to sit and let the pleasantly cool water wash over him for several hours, there was work to be done, so he shook the moisture from his hair with his long fingers, and parted it vaguely as he usually did before putting his light linen clothes back on. 

Jyn called across the pond and indicated that he could turn back around if he wanted. She was sitting on a rock, her boots beside her, as she was re-plaiting her wet hair, looking purposefully away. Again he felt a pang of shame for disrespecting the barrier the way he did.

“Same over here,” he replied, similarly sitting to put his shoes back on. She looked up, her damp bangs falling into her forehead as she reached for her own boots, and went to work without smiling.

“There’s fruit in these trees, I’m not positive, but I think it’s highly likely,” Cassian said, looking up into the tree canopy over their heads, listening for a moment to the distant sounds of birds and wind rustling the branches above. No sound enemy fire or Imperial ships, at least… 

“With a little climbing I think it can be retrieved.”

Jyn looked up, clearly pondering the height of this possible food, her brows knitting slightly. Indeed it was more precarious than Cassian would have liked, but they were in little position to pass up any possibility of food, as weak as they already were. She looked back at him, blinking and slipping on her other shoe.

“How are you so sure?”

“My… I’ve spent a considerable amount of time on a planet much like this,” he began apprehensively, not wanting to give much away. “That was where we- I mean, the locals relied on it heavily. "The planet Nahuatla... back in the day, if you've heard of it."

Jyn shook her head.

“Most of the places I’ve spent my time haven’t been as nice as this,” she said simply, finishing her task and getting to her feet. 

“It was nice till the Empire made it no longer so.”

Admitting such things made him dredge up the edges of memories. Times in his youth before things got bad, before everything wasn’t either about survival or the Cause. He looked back up at the tree canopy, remembering racing childhood friends and scrambling up trees if immense heights as if it were nothing. He was no longer that limber, but his limbs  _ were _ longer. He wondered if he could remember how it was done. 

“They have a nasty tendency toward that…” Jym muttered. Cassian wished he could smile at the comment. His whole  _ existence _ was living proof of the fact and there wasn’t much to laugh at there. 

 

When they returned to their crude camp, they worked to gather dry wood to burn, a struggle considering the rain of the previous evening, but with a little help from the industrial paste that they’d found in the boat’s hidden hold which turned out to be highly flammable, and Cassian’s multi tool flint, they managed to get something burning. It was a risk to be setting up smoke but they chose to chance it, hoping the tree cover above at the edge of the forest where they built their fire would trap some of it. They managed to fashion some curved plates of metal from the boat into a makeshift pot for boiling the water they toted in the big sack. Warm, pre boiled water was hardly refreshing or tasty, but it was better than some bizarre waterborne illness. 

On the horizon, Scarif’s sun was starting to fall. Cassian looked out in concern, thinking of what would happen when the sun went down. Would another storm like the last night’s come? Would the night bring out some sort of unsavory creatures? There hadn’t been time yet to construct a shelter so they’d most likely have to be sleeping out in the open. As they took a moment to rest in front of the fire, Cassian looked at Jyn, who sat silently with her knees up. She was staring directly into the fire, her face unreadable and guarded as he’d put together she frequently kept it, much like himself.

“I’ve got to try to go up before the light dies too much,” Cassian said to her, breaking the silence, and checking to see if his sleeves were rolled up adequately to give him enough arm movement to climb.

Jyn looked at him silently for a minute, her lips tightening together just so.

“What about your shoulder?” she asked finally. 

“It’s fine enough. I’ve done this… in the past. And I know what to look for.”

It was less than _fine_  but there wasn't time to wait till he was better. Jyn nodded, looking past him up at the tree canopy.

“It’s so high.”

He looked back behind him and considered the statement, thinking perhaps this was her way of admitting her concern. He gave a sigh and a nod.

“It is. But I’m really hungry.”

And with that he rose, brushing the sand off his pants and turning toward the trees. A few moments later, he heard Jyn get up behind him, and follow a few feet behind as he paced down the treeline, looking for something promising. He suddenly wished he had his trusty jacket with its many useful pockets. He wished he had Kaytoo beside him to berate him and tell him how high the odds of him falling and breaking his neck would be. 

Nahuatlans generally gained an encyclopedic knowledge of local flora and fauna at a young age, so important was the forest to their lives, and Cassian pushed back into the farthest recesses of his mind for what he could remember, picturing himself as small boy, being led through the woods where the tree canopy above felt like it was a vertical mile away. His had mother had pointed at various trees as they passed, cheerfully quizzing young Cassian in Nahuatlan about which trees held which fruit. If the trees on Scarif were anything like those…

The tree he ended up choosing had thick, hard vines that twisted all up and down the trunk. He stood at the base, tilting his head up. Indeed, it was many tens of feet up where the branches, on which he could distantly see the globe shaped purple fruit he was looking for were. He’d tied the sack to a loop in his belt from his other pants and he was ostensibly ready to get on with his mission, but he lingered at the base of the tree, trying to make sure his breath was steady and he was prepared.

“Good luck,” Jyn’s voice said behind him. He turned, finding her standing with her hands before her, holding something in a closed hand over her chest, the object that hung around her neck on a black string. Not knowing how to treat such a moment, he gave a small nod, and turned back to the tree. He raised his foot and put it down on the first root, a few feet from the ground, and placed his hand on a vine a few feet above his head. Simultaneously pushing with his foot and pulling upward, he lifted himself from the ground and found the next hand and footholds. 

One down, just many more to go, he thought, lifting his eyes up to the top of the tree again, and resolving not to let them move from that spot from then on out. 

-

At the base of the tree, Jyn stood, feeling powerless and afraid, as she looked upwards and watched Cassian slowly but steadily make his way up the trunk of an enormous, vine covered tree trunk upwards to a dizzying height. The pointed ends of her kyber crystal necklace were digging painfully into her hands, so hard was she squeezing it, but she hardly noticed. Normally extremely cool under pressure, Jyn felt unused to being this worried. 

And in this case, she was not the one in danger. Her worry was purely for another being, again - something she was not used to.  _ It was because their survival on this damned planet was entirely dependent upon the other _ , she told herself. If something were to happen to Cassian, her survival would be immediately jeopardized. She did not admit to herself truly how much of that worry was truly not about her own survival… but for his alone. It would be almost frightening to admit to herself how much she cared about him, at this point, given how long she’d resolved to stay cool and unattached to others. Her past ties had caused her so much trouble, and she’d been forced to face this pain while having to confront not one but two of those people from her past recently: Saw and her father. It had shown her the true cost of those kinds of relationships, but also caused her to question her entire outlook on life. Seeing what her father had done, seeing the loyalty in people like Cassian and the other rebellion fighters who had with him volunteered to help her on her crazy mission to steal the plans; the rest of the members of Rogue One… 

Jyn looked down at her feet and sighed, wishing she did not have to deal with this existential crisis while clinging to survival on completely random island on a far flung Outer Rim tropical planet populated exclusively, as she was aware, by Imperial outposts. Yet there she was.  _ If I ever make it off this rock… _ Jyn thought to herself morosely. She resolved to examine her life and confront her hypocrisies and make a change: no more living on the edge of the law, fraternizing with whoever could give her the next leg up, disregarding allegiances to causes as a waste of time…

_ If she ever made it off this rock. _ These bizarre bargains were completely irrational but some tiny more wistful part of herself that she generally repressed still believed it would be worth a try.

Looking back up, she sighed again, shifting her weight and hugging her free arm over her stomach, still squeezing the kyber for some sort of comfort. There was no real use in not sitting and resting and preserving her strength, but she felt entirely too on edge. It was not like she could have caught Cassian if he fell. She nervously undid the damp plait of her hair and shook it out with her fingers to dry it, trying to avoid the thought of that. He had made it all the way close to the top of the tree, somehow, and he would now have to shimmy his way onto a branch to gather fruit. Jyn almost couldn’t watch, but she also couldn’t  _ not _ watch. 

-

Jyn almost fell over herself once it became clear that Cassian had successfully gathered the desired fruit. He seemed to be placing the bag between himself and the tree, making it down slower so he could keep it from falling or causing him to lose his balance. Jyn practically could not stand the suspense.

“Drop it down when you can!” she called, once he’d made it some ways down the trunk. “I can catch it!”

She saw him look down and assess her position, standing with his arms holding two different vines and both his feet standing on one knot in the trunk. Terrifyingly, he released one hand and slowly shifted the bag free. 

“Look out below!” he shouted down, and Jyn got into position, bracing herself for impact. Suddenly, the bag was airborne, and it landed right in Jyn’s open arms. The weight of it surprised her, almost knocking the wind from her, and caused her to lose her balance. She fell smack onto her rear into the sand, eliciting a unconscious  _ oof. _  The bag fell to its side and fruit rolled out around her.

Once she had gotten her bearings and pushed the bag off her lap, she looked up. She could see, halfway up the trunk, Cassian shaking slightly for some reason. She realized with surprise that he was laughing.

“Don’t lose your footing now!” she shouted up, pushing bangs out of her face, the back of her neck feeling warm and her ego slightly bruised, much like her rear now was. She busied herself with gathering the fruit that had rolled out of the bag. It was a dark, mottled purple color, about the size of Cassian’s fist, shaped roughly circular and covered in a hard rind. Still sitting in the sand, she held one up to her face, squinting at it, wondering what part of it was edible or if it even tasted good. Not that it matter so much, at this point she was hungry enough to eat practically anything put in front of her, given it was edible. She heard a thump and looked up, seeing Cassian coming around the other side of the tree, brushing his hands against one another. 

Stopping when he saw her sitting in the sand, the bag of fruit between her splayed out legs and holding one up in front of her face, his mouth flicked up into a little smile. He closed the space between them and dropped to one knee in front of her, picking up one of the fruits that sat beside Jyn.

“Thank you,” she said, blinking at him, still feeling embarrassed, but filled with a rush of gratitude and happiness that he’d gotten down without injury. Cassian pulled his multi tool from his belt and extended one of the knives, an almost tranquil expression on his face as he inserted the end of it into the rind and made short work of removing it in thick, tough peels. He tossed it aside and placed the peeled fruit, now a rough globe of dense looking lavender colored fruit, into his palm, and pushed his knife to cut it in two. Knocking the few thumbnail-sized black seeds from the center, he held one half out to Jyn, taking a large bite out of the piece he held. She took it and held it up to her nose, watching him as he took another bite, closing his eyes like he was relishing the taste or perhaps something else. 

She took a hesitant bite - it was good. Sweet but not too much so, the fruit satisfyingly firm to sink one’s teeth into. 

“It’s good,” she observed, after swallowing her first mouthful. Cassian had finished his half already and let himself sit back on his rear, slouching forward slightly as he peeled the next fruit.

“Tastes like my childhood,” he replied, seemingly half to himself. She finished her half, suddenly realizing how ravenous she was, as she watched him open the second fruit. His forelocks fell into his face as his head was bent down, brushing his brows. Something about watching him focus transfixed her, she murmured a thanks as he passed her a second piece, pausing only for a few moments to quickly put away the piece in his hand before he picked up another to peel. They sat like this for a few minutes, Cassian mechanically removing rinds and slicing fruit and Jyn sitting across, observing and eating, while they quelled their intense hunger. 

“If these are here there’ll be other fruit,” Cassian finally paused to say, after they had been silently eating for a while. “Just have to look for that.”

“Seeing you climb that high terrified me enough,” Jyn said honestly, brushing back some of loose hair with the back of her hand, pausing before she looked back at Cassian, who was reaching for another fruit from the sack between them, a little smile playing on his lips. He paused to wipe some juice from his mouth, before looking back down at the fruit in his hand.

“I knew I still remembered how to do it. When I was young we used to do that all the time, even taller trees too. My people were known for being… pretty fearless.”

He stabbed his knife into the purple fruit’s rind and began to peel again. Jyn thought about the statement, considered his use of the word  _ were. _ She was fairly sure she’d put established that something pretty horrible had happened to him at the hands of the Empire at a young age, propelling him toward the Rebellion… much like it had happened to her. Except he had gotten on the right side a lot earlier. The guilt she felt earlier blossomed further within her, and she felt another rush of respect and affection for the dark eyed man sitting across from her.

“You’ve inherited that quality,” she said finally, slightly timidly for some reason. It was something indeed to be given a compliment by Jyn Erso, who held contempt for most people and respect for very few, a number that had ballooned in recent days. Cassian, head tilted down, turned his eyes back up, and broke into a bigger smile, a genuine one that reached up to his eyes and crinkled the skin at their edges. It made his whole face look warmer. Jyn instantly decided that she liked the way he looked when he smiled this way very much. She looked down again, feeling warmth in her cheeks and in her chest. 

They’d made it past the first hurdles of survival - food and water. Jyn looked over her shoulder at the sea, noticing as the sun crept toward setting, shifting the sky’s tones to a breathtaking palette of oranges, yellows, pinks. And Jyn, who so infrequently saw or paused to admire beauty, was suddenly right in the middle between two examples of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh tragic Cassian, makes my little heart hurt. Developed a little more backstory for him here since goodness knows we didn't get enough in the movie. Next chapter's in the works and I think you're really going to like where I'm taking these two reluctant little lovebirds so don't forget to subscribe.


	5. Shelter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse the long note, lot to touch on - first of all, saddened greatly as I’m sure we all are at Carrie Fisher’s passing. What a lady and a legend, her legacy won’t be forgotten. Secondly, I got to see Rogue One again yesterday and loved it and felt /all of the pain/ again but seeing it a 2nd time was a lot of fun and inspired more ideas for this fic so I’m really glad for that. Thirdly - HOLY MOLY this thing has breached 200 kudos. Thank you everyone, I’m really motivated by your feedback!!! Experimenting w/ some different POV stuff in this chapter, please enjoy and lots of love.

Chapter 5 \- Shelter

That evening there was no time to build any kind of substantial shelter, and it was not like either Cassian or Jyn had the energy. After they had finished their food, they returned to camp, wordlessly gathering up their scattered provisions and supplies, both with their minds on the sleep they desperately needed. They had accomplished a lot that day - gotten the boat back, found water, cleaned themselves up, fed themselves - but just the thought of all that had to be done the next day was exhausting. There was still a complete shelter to be built, and keeping a fire going to boil their water would require continuous work, and searching for more food with its related acrobatics.

Jyn reasoned to herself that the best use of the two starchy, thick black blankets they had found in the boat’s hold was to use one to sleep on top of, and one to sleep under. As the sun was falling, the temperature was too, and they’d need something to cover up with. She scanned the area around their makeshift camp, deciding sleeping on the sand would be the least uncomfortable and damp, and putting down their blankets just under the cover of the palm trees at the beach’s edge would give the most protection from the wind. She was not unused to sleeping on hard surfaces; she was used to unfurling a trusty bedroll she been carried around with her on wherever was necessary. However, it had been lost in her original capture and Imperial imprisonment with the rest of her meager possessions.

She looked over at Cassian, who was rolling up the sack with the rest of the fruit he’d gathered, a few feet away by the boat, which was looking more and more skeletal as they stripped it for supplies. He was backlit by the sunset, his form appearing dark against its bright orange light, and she watched his profile - long nose and pointed chin with his forelocks falling across his forehead - as he bent his head over his work. 

Jyn had forgotten for some reason that they’d have to be sleeping beside each other again that night, something that occurred to her that moment as she stood and watched Cassian holding the blankets, and she surmised that this would probably be the arrangement the indefinite future. This act that was typically very intimate but in their case it was strictly for survival and safety.  _ So why did she still get a small flutter in her chest when she thought of being that close to him for that long a time? _

Jyn, shaking her head as to somehow clear it, turned around and walked back up toward the trees, seeking a favorable spot for them to use for that evening, resolving to try to come up with some plans for shelters when her mind was less tired. She fumbled for a few moments with unrolling one of the blankets and spreading it on the sand. It was large but not…  _ excessively so _ . She sat down upon it, working on unlacing her boots in the failing light of the day, focusing even more intently on it as she heard Cassian approach.

“ _ All the comforts of home… _ ” she heard him mutter in his husky voice, and sit himself down on the other side of the blanket to take off his own shoes. Comforts of home - not something Jyn was hugely familiar with. 

“Where is home for you?” she asked almost without thinking, her subconscious curiosity getting the better of her as she peeked over her shoulder. Cassian’s large back was to her, slouched forward as he unlaced his shoes. 

“The base on Yavin 4,” he replied after a moment. Jyn pictured what little of the expansive place she had seen in her head, wondering what Cassian’s quarters might look like, who he might share them with. He had not let on about any friends or family or other relationships to that point, not that she expected him to - there had hardly been time for chatter since they met. And they both were closed book types. 

But a side of Jyn she was still getting used to  _ wanted _ to know more about him, what his daily life was like and the missions he ran and the other Rogue One soldiers who’d joined them under his leadership: it was clear he had some sort of sway, and was trusted, he was a Captain after all. How did he get to that point? He’d alluded more than once about things he had to do in the name of the Cause that he was not the most comfortable with:  _ what were those things? _

Yet she reflexively was guarded about her own past, desiring to keep her many secrets locked up. Already, based on what he’d seen between her and Saw, and her and her father, Cassian knew more than almost anyone about her past. There was conflict within Jyn, causing dissonance. Wanting for him to reveal himself to her, yet clinging to her guarded nature about herself. She knew she could not have both. So she closed her mouth and looked away, letting the cobwebs and dust and locks on their backstories remain.

Jyn reached for the other blanket, unfurling it and awkwardly climbing under it, rolling onto her side away from Cassian, and looking down the edge of the treeline where they lay, absently watching the wind gently sway the tropical foliage. With the dusk colors in the sky the view looked like something from a Coruscant billboard for some Galactic cruise. Except this was the farthest thing from a vacation like that. Reminded of Coruscant where she had spent some parts of her earlier life, she thought for the first time in a few hours of her father, hit with a pang of sadness. So long had she thought him dead or as good as so, so little time she’d had to see him alive again. She’d fulfilled his dying wish, if the plans had got transmitted, and being stuck here unable to know the outcome and unable to further act on his mission to ebb away at the Empire’s power was more than a little maddening. 

All she and Cassian had achieved that day was close to miraculous, and a cause for celebration. But the melancholy for lost time and death and frustration overtook her like a second blanket, and lingered above until she drifted off to sleep.

Cassian, all the meanwhile, was finishing taking off his boots, and he felt the exhaustion weighing down his bones. The adrenaline rush of climbing the tree had definitely worn off by then and the dimming light around them wasn’t helping. He made a mental note to fashion some sort of portable light source the next day; stumbling around in the dark as soon as the sun set wasn’t safe.

He turned, looking beside him to find Jyn already laid down beneath the blanket. She was curled in on herself with her back to him, seemingly already resolved to sleep. Cassian gingerly laid himself down too, pulling the rest of the blanket over his considerably larger form, trying to give her as much personal space as was possible given the size of their makeshift sleeping pad. He shifted himself around to as close to a comfortable position as he could muster, and tucked his uninjured arm behind his head, lying on his back, and took a deep breath. 

Their forms were still close enough together that he could feel the body heat radiating off of her. Cassian pushed his hair off his forehead with his free hand, and his dark eyes flicking over to Jyn’s form beside him, only her shoulder visible to him above the dark blanket they shared. Her head was tucked in; he mentally remarked how often she assumed this inward facing position, or sat with her knees hugged into herself. They were protective kind of poses, closing her off, a sort of proxy for her personality - guarded, reserved, self preservationist. He imagined how lonely her life up until this turn of events must have been, not unlike his own.

It was a curious feeling, being so close to someone - physically and in terms of life experience - and yet so far. Cassian turned his eyes away again, thinking of how long it had been since he’d slept next to a person like this. Now,  _ those _ were memories he banished to a very deep corner of his consciousness for all the hurt they caused him if he thought too long about them. But he hadn’t forgotten how nice just sleeping, peacefully, with another, could be. How it was to breathe in someone’s scent, to hold them other so warmly to the body that the other’s heartbeat could be felt. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time. A vague sadness about it washed over him too. 

Cassian turned his eyes up to the sky, where the light of the first stars and planets of the night was emerging. Here he was, at rest finally, and after a day that much had been achieved. Yet he couldn’t escape the feeling of being disconcerted. He thought of the planets he could see and how  _ far away _ they were. Of all ones he had been to, and all the ones he could have ended up on, and of all the circumstances, he was here, trapped.

Both Jyn and Cassian had lived their relatively short lives thus far in a mostly solitary, melancholy way. And now there they were, thinking of that fact and pondering their isolation from civilization on the island. Though they lay just inches apart, they were highly aware of the gulf between them. It was a gulf that was an extension of the one they both had put up between themselves and the world up to that point, galvanized by loss, betrayal, and the pain of the things they were forced to do. 

They had so much in common, an almost frightening amount to consider for two people who so often cut themselves off and bared the weight of their suffering completely alone. 

-

Cassian dropped the armload of long sticks that he’d been dragging to the ground next to his feet and walked a few feet away to where his canteen lay under a tree. He leaned an arm, putting back amount of his water and pouring the some over his face. He pushed back his now damp hair, relishing the crisp feeling of the non-sweat moisture on his face. 

He had been scouting around, gathering large, thick sticks to be used as the skeletal structure for their shelter. The design had been drawn in the sand that morning while he and Jyn sat on the beach and ate their breakfast. It was to be a round hut of sorts, composed of of a structure of sticks arranged in a circle, pointed inwardly on angle and meeting at a point at the top. The outside could then be covered with foliage or panels from the boat to make the inside waterproof and safe from the elements. He wasn’t sure it could withstand a storm like the one they’d weathered earlier, but it was something. The issue was that it required rather long, strong sticks, and Cassian had tasked himself with gathering them and dragging them to the spot they had chosen for the shelter; a small clearing just inside the treeline, where the ground was not damp the way it was deeper in the woods, but there would be trees above to catch their smoke, provide shade and protection from the rain. It was also where they could build a lean-to shelter for their supplies and a firepit, and was far enough away from the ocean that a tide wouldn’t drag everything away. Cassian had been at stick gathering for most of the morning, after Jyn and he split up to boil more water and gather more food, respectively. The fruits of their labor were sitting by the a circle of rocks that marked the spot of their new fire pit. 

Cassian looked down at his shirt - it was sweated through in areas and covered in dirt from the sticks he’d been carrying, and he frowned. It was a more humid day than they had seen before and all the heavy lifting wasn’t helping. He reached over his back and pulled his shirt off his torso, checking briefly at the burn on his shoulder. While he had his eyes behind him, he paused to look at Jyn, who was kneeling in the shade a few feet away. She had taken to gathering what they would use to cover the outside of the shelter, palm tree leaves and fronds bigger than her whole torso, which were sitting in a big pile some ways from her. She was also working on taking a big, tangled net of wiring they’d ripped from the powerboat and plaiting it, to be used to lash together the sticks at the shelter’s top where they met.

Her too-big shirt sleeves she’d rolled up over her elbows, and her hair she’d pulled back high on her head in a messy knot to keep it off her neck, not immune from the humidity of the day. The loose bits around her face curled from the moisture in the air around her cheeks as she stared intently down at her work. He leaned his uninjured shoulder against the tree, crossing his arms and watching her for a few moments longer. 

They worked together well, Cassian observed. Their shelter plans that morning they made in mutually swift efficiency, each building effectively off the other’s ideas as they were posed. So far they had worked smoothly through them, focusing without slack or distraction and pushing through the heat. They were similar in that way, both hard working non-complainers who followed through on tasks, not averse to toil when it was need.  _ She would have been a good asset to the Rebellion _ , Cassian thought to himself,  if she hadn’t had that fierce independent streak created by her relationship with Saw Gerrera or her father.  Cassian’s specific field in the Rebellion, Intelligence, would be especially good for someone with skills like she had, that he also did - quickness on foot and in mind, discreteness, cunning, recklessness to a certain degree, and of course, combat abilities. As someone who had for a long time recruited for their cause, he was able to definitively say, yes, she could have been very good indeed.

Cassian allowed himself to entertain what could have been for a few moments, something he usually tried to avoid. And with how well they worked together, in fighting their way through Jetha, in navigating the Scarif base and getting the plans earlier, and surviving out here, he thought they could have made a good team. Jyn, Cassian, and Kaytoo, traveling around the the edges of the galaxy, chasing secrets and gathering knowledge at the fringes. How differently it might have all turned out. 

His reverie was interrupted by the fact that Jyn looked up suddenly, blinking in surprise to see him standing there, sans shirt, leaning against a tree and watching her with a faraway look in his eye. 

“Oh,” she said briskly, once she’d taken stock. “Didn’t even hear you come in.”

She looked down at the work in her hands and put it down, pausing to reach for her own canteen. Seeing a moment for a mutual break, Cassian crossed the space between them and sat down near her, leaning against the mossy trunk of the tree near which she was working. He put his knees up and rested his arms across them, leaning back his head and watching her down his nose. 

Jyn, for her part, took a long drink of her water, realizing she had been so intently focused on loosening wires from the big tangle and adding them to her makeshift metal “rope” that she hadn’t even realized Cassian had returned. She looked over at the large pile of thick wooden sticks, assessing that they were close to having what they needed to start actually building the shelter. Of course, it  _ had _ to be built and it was  _ good _ they were so ahead at the task, but the increased permanence of it made her slightly uncomfortable. Like they were resigning themselves to being stuck on the island for the long haul. She shook her head slightly as if to push the feeling away.

Jyn bent her head down away from Cassian, still surprised at having looked up and found him watching her a moment ago, and wiped the sweat off her forehead, wishing this dreadful humidity that she wasn't used to would settle soon. Jyn didn’t care 90 percent of the time what she looked like - she’d never had the luxury or interest - but something about Cassian’s presence just then was making her annoyingly aware of how badly the the sticky heat that was dampening the hair around her forehead must have been making her look. 

“Looks we’re almost… like we can start building soon,” she observed, shaking her hand vaguely at the pile of sticks, and turning to look at Cassian. He sat against the tree near her, resting his arms on his knees, and his bare chest that heaved with slowing breath shined with sweat and water it looked like he’d poured over himself. His head was leaned back and he watched her through half lidded eyes, his face dark in the tree’s shadow. She wouldn’t admit it wasn’t just the heat talking but something about the way he observed her from that position and looking like that - she had to make sure she wasn’t letting her mouth fall open subconsciously. 

He looked past her at the stick pile and nodded, scratching at his hairline with a hand and squeezing his eyes shut, clearly worn out by the work. 

“It’ll be good to have a dry place to sleep,” he replied, eyeing the sky. “When it inevitably rains from this heat.”

Jyn nodded, looking down at her handiwork and thinking of what it would be like to sleep beside each other for… good now, in a little hut such as that one, and bit her lip. She restarted her weaving. 

“Can I tell you something?” Cassian said out of the blue, in his deep voice with his throaty sort of accent. Not desiring to get distracted by his dark eyes and his muscles again, Jyn shrugged while keeping her eyes down.

“I suppose?”  
  
“You….could have been great in the Rebellion, you know. Before… all this.”

Her surprise at the statement caused her to raise her head and look up at him, her brows furrowed slightly. Cassian licked his lips and tilted his head, sitting up a little straighter. 

“I was just thinking of it,” he continued, less hesitation in his voice now. “You’re worth 10 of some of the men I worked with… skills wise, and all.”

Jyn blinked, looking down at the greenish-greyish ground, considering the implications of the statement, trying to figure out if to feel flattered or annoyed. Cassian continued to regard her with his unreadable eyes. 

“And you’d be unexpected. Being unexpected is not exactly a asset everyone has.”

“Why,” Jyn began in a slightly suspicious tone, raising an eyebrow. “Because I’m a woman, or because I’m small?”

“I’m not saying those are limitations, I just recognize the enemy is prone to… underestimation.”

Jyn paused again. She thought back to her first experiences with the Rebellion, at the start of all these events. She remembered sitting in the base after she’d been extracted from the Imperial prison transfer, facing the aggressive General Draven, and Mon Mothma with her intelligent gaze and flowing white tunic. In the corner, Cassian had stood, and Draven had introduced him, before Cassian stepped forward and began interrogating her himself, contemptuously accusing her of lying about her allegiances and looking down at her with hostility in his dark eyes. She’d sized him up then, summing him up in a few impressions: a rebel spy with a piercing gaze who was clearly not impressed by the reputation that preceded her. She looked back at him and spoke again.

“Did you…  _ expect _ me to be like this when you were first looking for me?”

Cassian was thinking of the same encounter. His face was blank for a moment before the corner of his mouth turned up.

“No. But you turned out to be more than I thought.”

Jyn looked away, smiling internally but not showing it. 

“I knew you hated me when we first met,” she commented after a moment. _ I hated you too, _ she wanted to say. _ But you surpassed what I expected a hundredfold _ . 

“...could you blame me?”

She met his gaze and shook her head gently. Clearly she was no longer that person who had sat in the Rebellion’s base, facing its leaders and thumbing her nose at them and their cause. And yet when she’d brought her case to the leadership after the escape from Eadu, she’d been disappointed, facing distrust and discord that then frustrated her but now she recognized was not unwarranted considering what so far she’d done in the Rebellion’s eyes. Truthfully, she did not know exactly _what_ she was now or where she stood. This unexpected assessment by Cassian was not helping her confusion. 

“There’s a million could-have-beens,” she said cooly after a few moments.  “I try not to think of them. Especially now. And I don’t know how well I would have worked out with you. Considering the… bureaucracy and the power struggles.”

Cassian made a contemptuous sort of scoff. 

“I never liked that part of it either. But it’s what it was, and I prefer the Rebel Alliance to insurgency.”

Jyn tilted her head, her curiosity about his past piqued again. 

“Insurgency?”

He looked down, fiddling with a bit of grass in one of his hands, a dark look on his face for a moment before he looked up again, looking seriously at her. When he spoke again it was slightly quieter.

“There was a time in my past when I was like you were before, young - younger than you, and angry and… well, we  _ had _ to fight. Throwing bottles at Clones. That kind of thing.” he gave a dark chuckle. “Let’s say the Rebel Alliance has more resources.”

Jyn was quiet too. How similar their lives were proving to be was continuing to surprise her with every new detail she was learning about Cassian. Both had spent parts of their childhoods in the uncertainty of the Clone Wars, victims of the power struggles of the galaxy. Both had lost… well, everything. And both dealt with it by throwing themselves into what they knew best and by shutting themselves off from others for maximum operational efficiency. She wondered how long he’d even had a family for before he was all alone. 

“Regardless… that’s why I was so good at Intelligence in the Rebellion. I made my own way, even if I did have to do some things I disagreed with. I had independence, to a degree. You would have been good at it too.”

Jyn imagined a scenario where she had offered her services to Rebel Alliance sometime earlier. A scenario where she might have met Cassian and in different circumstances and different time. She flashed back to the times they’d worked together thus far, the effective times, not the ones where they were staring each other down and snarling accusations such as after Eadu, but when they were covering each other’s backs in firefights and solving on the fly what to do with the stolen plans. She paused, blinking, and wondering about what else they might have accomplished for the Rebellion, and kicked herself internally for doing exactly what she told him she  _ didn’t _ do a second ago. 

“Well… thanks. I suppose.” she muttered, fingering the edges of the wires in her hand. The darkness in having to think of his past had passed from over Cassian, and he was looking at Jyn again, thinking of what she could have done in the ranks. His curiosity about another question on his mind remained, and he decided to air it.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked.

“Hm?” Jyn replied, not looking up from her work. Cassian licked his lips again and leaned forward slightly.

“If we… if we had gotten off this place and back to Yavin… would you have stayed? With the Rebellion?”

Jyn’s small hands paused in her work and she looked up at him, biting down on her lower lip slightly as she considered his question. Cassian looked at her lips, observing their fullness and rosy tone and how small her cupid’s bow was, then squeezed a fist together hard enough to dig his nails into the flesh of his palm, remembering what he’d reminded himself about the distraction of physical desire.  

“You…” she began, faltering. “My father wrote in that code so that only I could find it, and and you… and everyone who came with us risked so much. I couldn’t exactly turn away after all that. If we were not going to meet a court martial and be stripped of our rank for insubordination upon our return, that is.”

Cassian allowed himself a small smile, not having considered for long the practical implications of what they had done before they had done it - requisitioning an unauthorized ship and loads of supplies, and broken orders to jet off to Scarif. He saw the opportunity as Jyn had, and it was set in his head, consequences be damned. 

“Well, it looked like there might not be a Rebellion for much longer... had we not acted.”

“I suppose that’s true...” she continued, looking up at the sky for a moment before looking back at him, earnestness in her large green eyes. “I don’t know if I ever said thank you for following me, either… thank you.”

He looked down, a small smile on his lips and the back of his neck feeling warm, never having been good at having gratitudes expressed at him. He didn’t do what he did for thanks or praise. Jyn, looking more peaceful then than he’d seen her before, continued to weave for a few more moments before she spoke again, not meeting his gaze.

“So yes, to answer your question definitively... yes, I would have stayed with the Rebellion. Someone there told me ‘ _ welcome home _ ’, and I haven’t had one of those in a long time.”

Cassian’s lips parted in surprise at her remembering his comment which now seemed like it had happened months ago even though it was only a day since. He let himself return the smile. He had meant that comment. For that is what the Rebellion was for him, and he wanted to share that feeling with her. He had not, for a long time, thought of sharing anything in that way, metaphorical or otherwise, with another. She was the one who changed that, he realized. When Jyn looked up again there was a smile on her face, and they held eyes for a few moments, both surprised at the inextricable pull that was coming from across the gulf. 


	6. Protection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter got like 100 kudos all on its own, this is /very wow/ to me so thank you all. I think you're going to enjoy this one!

Chapter 6  \- Protection

The staffs had been Cassian’s idea, but sparring was Jyn’s.

By day’s end they had finished the main structure of the shelter and had gotten the first layer or so of coverage over the wooden frame, plus laid several layers of dry base in the interior for sleeping, to try to make it more comfortable to sleep on. The next day they would have to finish the supply lean-to and manage other issues, like long term storage for their water, but they had accomplished the main task. And luckily, the humidity was falling with the sun, the air finally breezy again. After dinner, Jyn sat quietly on the beach at the edge of their camp, looking out into the sunset and lost in her memories, while Cassian was rummaging around somewhere behind her.

She turned around curiously, to see him holding one of the long sticks left over from the construction of their shelter. He was hefting it before himself, seemingly weighing it in his big hands.  

“What are you doing?” she asked. Cassian looked up, and flipped the stick, resting its end on the ground. It was about as tall as his chest.

“I was thinking of weapons,” he called back in reply. “In case of… well, it just would be smart.”

The statement hung in the air, leading them to both silently consider the implications. Jyn nodded slowly, realizing he was right. She’d been pushing away thoughts of possible threats mostly since they got there, trying to stay focused on their bare survival. Now that they had gotten a handle on that, however….

Jyn got to her feet, and walked past the long shadows of the trees to where Cassian stood. She picked up another one of the leftover sticks, this one less longer than Cassian’s, of course, given she was several inches shorter than him. She lifted it with her hands a few feet away from each other on the shaft.

Of course, blasters were objectively the best weapon, but she _did_ know her way around a staff. “ _Stormtroopers are terrible hand to hand,_ ” she remembered Saw saying one day in her youth, early in her training, as he pressed a long baton into her hands and smiled. Now that she'd fought them multiple times she knew this as true. “ _Foolishly they think it’s not worth training for. But we’re smarter. These have saved my life more than few times.”_ She too was reminded of Chirrut Îmwe, the blind prophet from Jehta who she saw take down a whole swarm of Stormtroopers with just his staff and what was an extraordinary sense of hearing. She looked up at the sky for a moment, wondering what had become of him as she raised one hand and brushed her fingers against the shape of the kyber crystal necklace hanging under her shirt.

“Do you know how to fight with a staff?” she asked Cassian, taking a few steps away and giving the staff a flip. More of Saw’s instructional quips filtered through her hand. “ _Footwork is everything, lose your balance and you lose the fight”. “Keep your grip firm but not too tight, brittle fingers will spell an injury”._

Jyn widened her stance, holding the weapon at a diagonal in front of her. She closed her eyes and imagined herself back on Jehta, Stormtroopers at her back and front. In a fell swoop, she stabbed back with one end of the makeshift weapon, then flipped it upwards, the long side of one end smacking the imaginary adversary before her. She put it back down and turned around. Cassian had been watching her, a slight uncertainty in his eyes.

“A little. I prefer a blaster,” he remarked. Jyn _did_ know how good of a shot he was, remembering how he had shot Krennic right after the Imperial officer threatened her on the transmission tower bridge. Seeing Cassian standing there, alive and on his feet, blaster trained upwards as he had made a life or death shot to save her life - it was one of the nicest feelings she’d ever felt.

“Well, you have time to learn…” Jyn muttered, looking down at her weapon. The statement was darker than she had intended and they were both momentarily confronted with the larger reality of their situation again. Jyn put down her staff and bent to unlace her shoes.

It was time to to a coping mechanism that was a familiar one for Jyn - throwing herself back into training.

 

Jyn and Cassian faced each other on the beach, getting their bearings with their respective weapons. They’d taken off their shoes, taking advantage of the sand’s softness, and Cassian had again removed of his shirt for least constraint. The bright orange light of sunset gave his tawny skin a warm glow, the shadows emphasizing the tone in his torso. Jyn looked away, reminding herself to stay focused.

“Let’s see how much of this I remember…” Cassian said under his breath, stepping out to widen his stance. Jyn observed him prepare with an even expression on her face, trying to avoid letting a smile betray her excitement. The last few days had been full of confusion and uncertainty for her - her relationship to Cassian being one source of it, but standing here, weapon in hand, she felt a small surge of confidence. This was something she knew she was good at, something she’d actually trained for (unlike surviving stranded on a tropical island).

“Ready?” she asked, meeting his dark eyes with her lips set, feeling the buzzing in her limbs that often came just before a fight. Cassian gazed at her across the few feet between them, tilting his head down slightly till he looks at her from beneath his brows and lashes, making his eyes look darker and smokier. He gives a single nod.

For a moment, neither moved. Each was frozen in focus, trying to decide if to make the first move or not. It was Jyn who ultimately began it. Quicker than could almost be seen, the lower end of her staff came swinging at Cassian’s side. Only his quick, well trained instincts allowed him to deflect the hit by sweeping his weapon to guard his hip. The sticks meet with a loud _crack_ , and they both paused, staring each other down. There was a sparkle in Jyn’s eye, he noticed, a certain determined, spunky glint as she narrowed them.

Cassian’s hesitation with the weapon became more clear as Jyn made the next move, flipping one end of her staff over the other directly at him - its collision with his shoulder is only averted when he makes a quick sidestep, quickly trying to realign his footing so in anticipation for her next swing. It came at his side again, and he deflected, but barely, then realizing he’d be playing _a whole lot_ of defense on this one. Jyn’s swings were just so smooth, her feet following with grace and nearly mechanical precision. Her supple body moved agilely aside when he swung at her, twisting and turning like fabric in water as she pulled off one deft defensive move after the other and threw herself back on the offense. Compared to her Cassian felt he was lurching, throwing too much weight or too little, feeling his injured shoulder burn with exertion that he probably shouldn’t have made in the first place.

Their quick paced, combative dance didn’t last too long. In one particularly fast series of moves, she had him turned to his side and brought a swing unexpectedly to his other side, and when he tried to turn quickly to deflect it, his legs got criss crossed and he lost his footing. One of his arms flailed for a moment before he fell backwards onto the sand, his staff falling to his side, and he let out a small groan at the impact.

He reached back and put a hand behind his head, rubbing it, and when all his body parts were accounted for and uninjured, he looked up, finding Jyn standing at his feet with her staff down and a small, triumphant smile on her face. Cassian, though ego bruised, couldn’t help but smile back.

“Okay, so I need some work,” he remarked throatily, propping himself up on an elbow. “I expected this.”

Backlit by the sun, Jyn’s slender frame looked as if an aura shown around it. The edges of her sun kissed cheeks, turned up with her smile, shone as she tilted her head, looking down and relishing her little victory. Cassian’s lips parted inadvertently as he came to terms with just how _beautiful_ she looked, as she turned her gaze back at him and dropped her staff, reaching a hand out to help him up.

Either she pulled too hard or he pushed himself up too quickly, because their unbalanced motion caused him to stumble to his feet, running right into Jyn, chest first. It was her that lost her footing for a moment, then, and Cassian was the one this time to reach out to steady her, wrapping a quick arm around her small waist. They finally both steadied, and found themselves but inches away from each other. Cassian’s palm was pressed lightly to Jyn’s back, and his other was still holding Jyn’s wrist from when she’d helped him up, and her was still holding his.

Jyn’s breath came a bit quicker, stunned slightly from her stumble, and she looked up through her lashes at Cassian. She was so close Cassian could feel the breaths from her nose on his chin. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining the moment longer than it really was, but neither of them let the other go for a little longer than was natural. Holding her with both arms in the way he was, Cassian became acutely aware of his own desire to pull her wrist and push her torso in even closer than it was just then, so it could press against his own body. The space between them seemed to crackle with electricity as they held eyes - hers large and light green, his intense and dark, for those few moments.

Jyn is the first to break away, looking down and relinquishing Cassian’s wrist. He let her wrist slide out of his hand when she pulled away, and she stepped back, extricating herself from the arm around her waist. His hands stayed in the position in which they held her for a split second longer, the warmth of her body lingering on them, before he dropped them too, clearing his throat.

“Sorry,” he said swiftly, turning his head to peek at Jyn, who was picking up her staff. She stood back up and pushed back her loose hair with a hand.

“You’re right,” she said from her position a few feet away, holding her staff to her side and raising her chin slightly, the smile of victory back on her lips. He was relieved that she hadn’t taken the moment that had just occurred as some kind of overstep on his part, or did and was pretending it hadn’t been that way. _But in truth, if she had thought that, wouldn’t she have pulled away much sooner?_ Cassian ran his hand across the lower half of his face, pondering it for a second longer, his mind reeling ever so slightly. He couldn’t let this distract him now but he was worried it might.

“About what?” he replied after a pause.

“You need a lot of work.”

A grin, good natured if slightly embarrassed, appeared across his face, more to himself than anything else, and he reached down to pick up his staff again. This didn’t occur to him, but it was the first grin Jyn had seen out of him. It was a little wolfish, causing his eyes to squint cheerfully, and the angles in his face shift from their usual serious blankness. Jyn, momentarily enchanted, looked away, thinking for a second how her breath had caught in her chest when he’d caught her from falling just then. She’d found herself so close to his face she could make out tiny individual scars across his temples, individual creases between his straight, heavy brows.

“ _Focus, Jyn!_ ” she pictured Saw saying in her head, after he helped her to her feet during a training session. “ _Distractions are everywhere in a fight. You cannot let your focus quiver for even a second.”_

Jyn tossed her head and prepared herself. She looked at Cassian get his bearings again, widen his stance and adjust his weapon before him, the muscles in his arms rippling.

Indeed, distractions were everywhere.

\--

 

_“No!” Jyn heard a scream rip from her mouth, as she watched Cassian fall from the databank, his limbs hitting various metal support beams with sickening thumps before he landed on a wider one, face down, and his crumpled body motionless. Blood began form a blooming pool near to his head. Jyn's grip on the databank wall was for dear life, but the sight of Cassian’s lifeless body made her for a moment want to let go and join him._

_She continued her scramble, however, the disk with the plans banging her on the lower body as she swung herself up to the transmission bridge. Her heart was pounding in her chest like she’d never felt it before and everytime she closed her eyes she saw Cassian’s body with the blood drenching his hair. Her breaths came in ragged gasps. When she came across the console to transmit the data, she felt her heart wrench as she realized that someone had gotten there first. The console had been shot at with a blaster, leaving it a smoking heap of twisted metal and wires. Turning, she saw that the antenna had been shot too, a black blaster burn replacing one side of it._

_Hot tears of frustration and hopelessness burning at her eyes, she realized her only recourse was to return to the ground level and see if she could get the plans physically extracted. She ran to the elevator, violently wiping her cheeks with a wrist that was scratched and seeping, leaving an angry crimson stroke behind. She somehow made it to the ground and stormed out onto the beach, sprinting into the trees though she hardly knew where she was going._

_The landing pad where the Rogue One crew had offloaded came into view and she increased her speed, focusing exclusively on the weight of the data disk on her belt. Just need to get off, just need to get off, just need to get off._

_But when she arrived at the hard concrete landing pad, she found it to be the smoking, blasted remnants of a war zone, the acrid smell of death and destruction filling her lungs. Bodies lay everywhere - some Imperial Troopers but many her own men, she could see by the attire. Over by a large console, she caught sight of Chirrut’s body, face up, his multipurpose staff weapon lying across his chest. Near him, the large form of Baze, and near the shot out ship, she saw Bodhi’s, a blaster lying inches from an bloody, unmoving, outstretched hand. And then there were others, Rebel soldiers whose names she did not know, but who had lined up behind her and Cassian to fulfill this insane mission._

_Cassian. Jyn fell to her knees, her legs unable to hold her up now that she knew she was alone, and everyone was gone. How would she get the plans off then? Her whole body shook, the tears feel faster and a sob racked her chest._

_Suddenly, a figure flanked by two Stormtroopers emerged from the entrance to the base where she and Cassian had earlier infiltrated by disguise, causing Jyn’s heart to feel like it stopped dead for a moment, and her blood run cold. A man in a dirtied white uniform, hatless, a ripped cloak billowing out from either side of him as he marched ahead._

_“Another Erso,” the man, whose name she knew to be Krennic, remarked acidly as he approached, his hands folded behind him and a hateful look in his eye. “Your whole wretched family, girl, has been a thorn in my side for over twenty years.”_

_Jyn, frozen, knew that reaching for her blaster would be pointless. She just stood, silently letting the tears fall as Krennic came closer, the scowl and furrow in his brow becoming clearer as he came closer._

_“And you know what?” he snarled, once he was but a yard from Jyn. “This ends now. Your mother was a headstrong bitch who couldn’t learn her place, and your father was always more trouble than he was worth. You take after them both well.”_

_“You’ll never win,” Jyn choked, wiping her teary, bloody cheek with her sleeve, and reaching back to put her hands on her data disk._

_“Give me that, you insolent child,” Krennic spat, and directed his Troopers to wrench Jyn off the ground by her arms. He walked around her and ripped the data disk away, coming back to stand before her. The Stormtroopers forced Jyn back to her knees, holding her down. She stared up at him, and it was unclear whose face held more hate. She repeated the empty phrase she said before._

_“You’ll never win.”  
_  
_Krennic scoffed, his eyes on the data disk in his hand. He threw it to the ground and grabbed a blaster from one of the Troopers, destroying the disk with an unceremonious shot. It exploded, leaving behind a black spot of char and a thousand broken pieces of metal. Jyn was forced to watch the only copy of the plans that showed the fatal flaw, their only chance at destroying the Death Star, the fruit of her father’s many years of secret toil and dealings, what Cassian, Bodhi, Kaytoo, Chirrut, Baze and countless others had given their lives to save, be destroyed in an instant._

_“I’ve heard that one before,” Krennic said quietly, a disgustingly triumphant look on his features. He grabbed Jyn’s chin roughly and put the blaster’s end to her forehead, forcing her to look him in the eyes as he said the last words._

_“A phrase emptier than your Rebellion’s potential. And one you know to be false.”_

Jyn gasped, her eyes shooting open as she woke from the nightmare, her breath coming quickly all of a sudden. She jumped to a sitting up position, picking up her hands and pressing them to her cheeks, as if reminding herself that _this_ was reality and not the atrocity she had just dreamt.

_Just a nightmare, just a nightmare._

Her eyes adjusting to the light, Jyn looked down at herself, her lower body under the black blanket. In the distance, she could hear the gentle sound of the ocean down the beach and the wind swaying the branches of the trees around them. Through the open entrance hole to the hut, she could see the edges of the star studded sky. She let her breath slow, looking at it for a while as she calmed down.

It was the most horrible dream she had had in a very long time, and Jyn was someone who had a lot of horrible dreams. Everything about it was sickening. She squeezed her eyes shut and pushed her hand through her hair, trying to push away the mental images, especially the ones of her dead friends and the shattered data disk. She put her legs up, pushing off the blanket and hugging them to herself as she often did, slowing her breathing.

Jyn looked down beside her, where Cassian lay, sleeping soundly. When she fell asleep beside him, she always did it curled in, facing away from him, partially to give him some space and to maintain her own. And after all that had happened between them that day she felt like she needed to ground herself, remind herself to keep her distance. So she slept away.

But now she got her first view of him asleep, he was turned in toward her, or her back had she been asleep. He lay with one arm folded and tucked behind his head, the other lying across his chest, bent at the elbow with his hand curled in on itself near his face. His face was still and blank, his chest and shoulders falling gently as he breathed the soft, steady breaths of deep sleep. The image of him, lying on the databank platform, blood coming from his head, entered her mind and she gasped again, inside, stunned again by how lifelike it was. It wasn’t far from what she _had_ seen.

Then Jyn did something quite despite herself, acting on instinct - with one arm still hugging her knees to herself, she reached out and gently stroked the tips of her fingers against his forehead. Something about what she had seen made her want to reassure herself and feel the warmth of life in him. She found it there, gently brushing aside a few strands of his hair before forcing herself to pull her hand back in order to not wake him. Cruel to interrupt his sleep with her childish fears and bad dreams, though a deep part of herself she wouldn’t admit to wanted to shake him awake, confide in him, and pull his arm over her shoulders for comfort.

Hugging her knees again, she realized the dream had crystallized, in a horribly vivid and imagined way, her deepest subconscious fears about what had happened in the last few days - namely, that they had failed to transmit the plans, that the Rogue One crew had perished, and that Krennic and the Empire had won the day after all, maintaining their vice grip on the galaxy and crushing the Rebellion once and for all.

Jyn, needing fresh air, crawled forward a few feet on the hut’s floor and climbed out, stepping out into the cooler outside, shivering slightly for a moment before she acclimatized. She shoved her boots on without tying them and took a few steps toward the trees, hugging her arms around her and looking up at the sky above, which was so full of stars and a several bright moons that it was not even that hard for her to see around her despite it being night.

But, how far from was this nightmare from the truth, _really_? Indeed, she did not know if their transmission had worked, she did not know who, if any, of the Rogue One crew had survived, and she did not know what the ultimate fate of the Rebel Alliance. She wasn’t dead, and neither was Cassian, but they were stuck there till further notice and unable to help or communicate. For all practical considerations… as good as dead.

Jyn took a deep breath and continued her aimless wander into the trees, not caring that she could not see much or know where she was going. Her feet seemed to step with a mind of their own as she could not help but linger on what she had dreamt, on this realization she had made.

_As good as dead… as good as dead… as good as dead…_

Still walking without thinking much, she fumbled around her shirt collar for her necklace, fishing it out and holding it in her hand as she wandered. There were many times in her life that she had wanted to rip it off and throw it out; her lowest, most disparaged moments. When she realized her father was never coming back to fetch her. When she thought about how her mother had let herself be killed almost for no good reason - seemingly just to spite the Empire, and how angry that made young Jyn. When she realized Saw wasn’t coming back for her. There were others, too, times when she cursed herself for believing even vaguely in the Force or believing that there could be anything good for her in this life.

But she had never been able to do it, never been able to discard this small piece of her original family, this little lasting physical tie to an ancient power that quite frankly, most people had stopped believing in a long time ago. She’d always shoved it back into her shirt and swore under her breath, wishing she was built of stuff strong enough to just finally sever the cord and throw it out.

Now, however, her feelings toward it were warmer. What she’d seen with her short but impactful interactions with Chirrut told her there was hope in the Force yet, though she knew she would probably never truly comprehend it. So she let the crystal sit in her hand, curled against her chest, as she walked, breathing deeply Scarif’s fresh, moist air and letting branches and bush leaves brush against her body as she moved quietly through the forest. She was dimly aware of the sounds of rustling around her, either the wind or some other body in the brush, but paid them no mind, letting her mind just numb.

Jyn stepped into a small clearing and stood there, staring up at the sky, and looking at the stars and planets that glimmered way above. _If anyone was out there, if anyone was somehow listening…_ she squeezed her crystal tightly and closed her eyes, wishing beyond wish to somehow get off this island and back to where she could matter.

When she opened her eyes, she was looking up into a tree whose branches sat just a few feet above her head. And sitting in the crook between a branch and the trunk, staring directly at her, were a pair of large, animal eyes that glowed, reflecting the occasional glimmer of starlight. Jyn’s caught her breath, frozen in her place. The animal was a big cat of some sort, with a dark, earthy coat mottled in darker splotches. Its face was symmetrical, featuring a short snout and a triangular nose. Two ears on either side of its head were angled slightly down, indicating aggression. Most terrifyingly, however, it had two several inch long saber teeth sitting on the side of its mouth, and its eyes were trained on Jyn.

“Don’t move,” a voice behind her commanded, and Jyn gasped, recognizing Cassian’s husky tone, flat and urgent. “Jyn. Whatever you do.”

Jyn stood, her eyes wide and unable to look away from the big cat above her, for several terrifying moments. Her hand still stood at her chest, pressing clasped around the crystal, suddenly clammy with fear. The big cat’s foremuslces tightened as it lowered itself slightly, its ears further flattening and it looking poised to spring. The light glinted off its saber teeth.

What happened next took the next several seconds to comprehend. Jyn was aware of the cat springing from the tree, a loud _thunk_ noise as something hit it on its body in midair, a simultaneous a yowl from the cat and another gratuitous _thump_ as its body hit the forest floor. Shaking, she looked at it. It quivered for a moment before it lay motionless. Sticking out of neck, a spot now seeping dark blood, was the shiny handle of Cassian’s multi-tool knife, just catching the end of a ray of moonlight.

After Jyn had caught her breath, she quickly turned around, her heart still racing and her hand still holding her necklace.

“Cassian,” she choked, somehow unable to get her feet to move off the ground. They seemed to be still trapped in the fear based paralysis from moments ago that she realized may have saved her life.

He was standing a few feet back, between two trees, his face dark, but she was able to make out his brows knitted in concern, his hands raised slightly from the move he had just made. Jyn’s legs finally transitioned from stonily paralyzed to breathlessly wobbly and she stumbled forward toward him. It was unclear if she grabbed him first or if he scooped her up, but nevertheless, the next second he was holding him tightly against himself, and her arms were wrapped around his chest like a small child’s, clutching desperately, both needing to make sure the other one was really there. She pressed her cheek against his shirt, feeling his quick heartbeat against her face, as she quivered under his grasp.

“I thought I would hit you,” Cassian murmured, sound surprised himself. In truth, he was in nearly as much shock as she was, his breath still quick from the adrenaline of the moment. He’d seen the smilodon cat about to spring, he knew it, he had seen them in the wild before, he knew how they could knock a man down by the shoulders and deliver a bite to the throat that killed at once, excruciatingly. He had seen it through the trees seconds before he saw Jyn’s small form in the moonlight, her head turned up in it and, and had reached into his boot and flipped out the knife. His only recourse had been to throw it, and he was so, so terrified he would miss, or worse, _hit Jyn_ \- but the adrenaline, and his well trained shooting arm and eye, had fueled a nearly perfect shot. The knife had sunken into the animal’s neck; instant death.

“How did you know I was here?” Jyn said, a second later, still not fully grasping what happened. Cassian’s arms were wrapped around her lower torso, his dipped head brushing his nose against her hair. He blinked, and looked up again, the shock slightly ebbing but not disappearing. His voice came at a low tone, almost a whisper.

“I woke up and you weren’t there, and I just… had a bad feeling. I had a bad feeling.”

Jyn slowly blinked. _Speaking of things she’d never comprehend._ She raised her head slowly, looking up at Cassian, whose brows were still furrowed as he looked past her, at the animal lying dead on the ground several feet away. His arms were still wrapped around her back, but his dark eyes were wide.

“I thought I would miss,” he repeated a variation on what he’d said before, still looking as if he didn’t believe what had happened.

“You didn’t,” Jyn said earnestly, shifting her arms so that her hands were pressed against his wide chest. Something like a smile came to her face, her lips parted anyway, her brows rose, in a rush of gratefulness and thrill. Cassian finally turned his head down to her, looking at her with continued surprise, like he was not expecting to find her there, in his arms.

“You saved me.”

It was barely aloud, a whisper, all she could think to say. Between the shock of her nightmare, and this near death experience, if it could be called such, and being saved in his wholly unexpected, completely chance way - it left Jyn stammering to think clearly. All she was clear of was that he was there, holding her, their bodies pressed together. His face, in the darkness, blinked down at her, as the surprise slowly faded further.

Jyn, reached up and touched the side of his face, her palm pressing lightly against the angles in his jaw and cheekbone, tickled slightly by his beard. She was not thinking rationally, of course, they were both buzzing with the adrenaline of what they’d just been through, but it came even as a surprise to her there to find herself raising herself up on her toes and pressing her mouth to his own.

What was more of a surprise was finding him returning her tender kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUN DUN. Stay tuned!!


	7. Cleanliness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a little late! I was traveling, and also this one took a bit more wrangling than usual to get right. It isn't my favorite but it's moving things along so just bare with me. Just to help you picture it: the smilodon is like a cross between a jaguar and a sabertooth tiger. The species was made up by me and has no canonical basis as far as I’m aware. Content warning right now because there will be some general description of butchering/meat preparation ahead (food context, not too gory). Anyway, enjoy the chapter and stay tuned for more ASAP.

Chapter 7 \- Cleanliness 

The kiss lasted less than 30 seconds, but it had come so unexpectedly. They held each other's’ lips, barely exerting pressure - just touching. But sometimes the lightest of kisses can be just as much of a sensory explosion as a deeper, harder ones - especially if they are as was tantalizingly brief as Jyn and Cassian’s was. It suddenly ended as quickly as it had began. Their lips separated, but they were still centimeters apart. Jyn stood, for a moment, with her eyes closed and her lips parted, feeling the sensation of the kiss for a half a second longer before she opened her eyes again. She found Cassian looking at her with the same surprise that had been in his eyes when he had been regarding the body of the dead smilodon cat moments earlier.

Both were instantly wondering who instigated the contact - Jyn thought it had been her and Cassian thought he himself had leaned down and started it. Jyn could feel the breath from his nose tickle the space between her brows, and she quickly removed her hands from where they had been pressed to his chest and stepped back, sliding out of his arms with the back of her neck burning with embarrassment. It was her turn to stammer, and recognize she had overstepped a boundary.

“Sorry - thank you,” she managed, and wrapped an arm around her torso, looking away, still trying to process the moment of adrenaline-induced ecstasy that had comprised their brief kiss. Cassian stepped wordlessly past her, unable to think of what to say or how to react to the moment. He got down on one knee and wrapped his palm around the handle of his multi tool, and pulled it out. It dislodged itself with a sickening sucking sound, and he silently looked down at the blade that gleamed with crimson. Reaching beside him and pulling a leaf from a small plant, he used it to wipe the blade, not able to avoid getting a little bit of blood on his fingertips. The sight jarred him for a brief moment, memories of human bodies he’d bent over in the past, inspecting them and checking if they were dead, flashed into his brain. Because it had been his job to kill them.

Cassian shook his head, reminding himself that this was nothing like any of those situations. He had seen Jyn in danger and he’d acted, neutralizing a sudden threat like any other, with quick thinking. He returned to a technical mindset, inspecting the fallen animal, guessing at its weight, wondering how easily it might be cleaned. It had been a long, long time since he had had to do that - he had been living on the Alliance's neat ration meals taken in a mess hall for years now. It was filling, bland, unexciting sort of food, never leaving one more than just satisfied. There had been other times in his life where he had had to live a great deal more leanly. All the calculating and technical thinking, nevertheless, was keeping him from thinking too hard about the very confusing thing that had just happened between Jyn and himself.

“What... is that thing?” he heard Jyn ask behind him. Cassian folded the knife of his tool into the handle, and tucked it into the small pocket in the lining of his boots. The weight of it felt like it was hot against his ankle.  He had almost not grabbed it when he had wandered out of the hut earlier. The thought of what could have occurred if he had not made the snap decision was not one he wanted to consider.

“A smilodon,” he answered, still staring at the animal, its shiny silver and black fur and massive canines, built for camouflage and killing. He had wondered in the back of his mind a few times before then about if there was any sort of predators in these woods, and now he had his answer. _It did seem a little too idyllic_ , till that point. They had to make sure they weren’t getting too comfortable, he told himself firmly, focusing still on threats and meat to avoid looking into Jyn’s eyes and facing the confusing reality.

“A type of big jungle cat. They’re dangerous… but solitary. And nocturnal. So we had just better watch out at night. I think we… I think we can’t afford to waste this meat.”

Cassian heard Jyn take a few tentative steps forward and crouch beside him. He allowed himself to gaze at her in the darkness as she uncertainly looked at the fallen predator. Her brows knitted and she reached out, brushing her fingers against the spot where his knife had been moments ago. Cassian was looking at her the way her lips looked like in profile, feeling like his own tingled for a moment as he did it.

He saw blood on the tips of her fingers, much thinner and more delicate than his own which were dark and calloused, and resisted a shudder - there would be a lot more of that soon. Jyn stared at the animal for a few moments longer, Cassian could see her biting her lip, and then she looked at him, giving a small nod.

“I think you’re right,” she muttered, fingering at something just under her shirt and he had seen her do a few times. Cassian made to get to his feet, before she stopped him.

“Wait,” she added, looking up at him from her crouch as he was halfway to a standing position. From this angle, her face bathed in moonlight with her brows knitted just so and her lips slightly parted, she looked more delicate and child-like than he had ever seen her. His urge to protect her further, an extension of the feeling he’d felt when he gave his knife a wild throw, burned in his chest. He got back down and looked at her with his brows raised, resting his hand on the back of his raised knee and waiting for whatever it was she wanted to say. He wondered wildly for a moment if she might take her small hand and place it against his cheek again; indeed, he knew he _wanted_ her to do that.

Jyn, one hand still holding her necklace against her chest, licked her lips and looked at him seriously. She herself was summoning the steeliness within. She had gotten good over the years at pep talking herself, talking herself out of flighty or emotional moods, reminding herself to focus. What she had there was a situation where her lack of vigilance had almost spelled her death, followed by a brief, emotional moment of weakness that she’d taken out on Cassian, and now a huge carcass, prime protein, that was there and needed to be moved. What was needed now - and from now on - was _focus_ . Not… _physical dalliances._ This she put together in her head quickly, characteristic of the ever tactical, calculating Jyn Erso. She had had to make sure she was fully convinced of it. And getting it into the open would help with that. Or so she hoped.

“Again, thank you, so much,” Jyn began, stammering slightly at the start but hitting her stride quickly. “I shouldn’t have wandered off without being vigilant and I shouldn’t have… look, that that was a one time moment, alright? All adrenaline and shock… let’s just move past it and get to work.”

Cassian blinked, facing his third great surprise of the night. He quite literally did not know what to say; he just stared back. She was dancing around referring to it directly but she knew he meant the kiss. He looked away for a moment, reached up to scratch the back of his head absently, and bit down at the inside of his mouth. Then he looked up and nodded. This unfamiliar feeling - he felt _hurt_ , and he knew it.

Jyn was right, he understood that, and he knew he should agree. Allowing themselves these physical indulgences was undeniably a distraction. And they couldn’t afford any of those out here, especially considering what had just occurred. There was this valuable source of food, too, before them, and time was of the essence to clean it.

 _He knew it._ He recognized it. But what he also aware of was that, inside, he _didn’t_ wish it had never happened. Cassian Andor had spent the large majority of his life suppressing those kinds of feelings, deferring to logic rather than emotion, pushing away others, and returning Jyn’s kiss just then had been the first time in a long time he’d allowed himself to embrace his instincts. And it had been so, so nice, just to touch her and feel her warmth and hold his hands over the curves of her waist that he it had been hard, recently, to ignore.

But Jyn stared at him with the even, determined, serious look that she was very good at, her face showing no evidence of wavering on what she had just said. If there was, she was hiding it very well. So perhaps he really _was_ alone in feeling how he was, and she really _did_ regret it. He’d allowed his instincts, his emotion to rule him for but a moment, and _that_ was how it ended.

“Let’s… er, let’s figure out how to move this thing,” he managed, feeling now a deeply uncomfortable mix of embarrassment and pain at rejection. But she was right. There was work to do and focus required. _She was right, she was right, she was right_ , he told himself. Maybe if he said it enough times he would believe it.

Jyn, for her part, told herself she was glad he had accepted her statement quickly. They were back on firm, even understanding, and mutual acceptance that their relationship had to remain as it was, with the requisite distance between them. So why did she feel a twinge of hurt, when he broke eye contact and looked down after she said it? Why did, as soon as she had said what she had wanted to say, the steeliness with which she said it feel like it was weakening, like a peeling gilt? Old Jyn Erso, Jyn who was not affiliated with the Alliance in any capacity, who played entirely by her own rules - she would not have a problem such as this. She’d be able to pack away her feelings into a box and toss out the key, repressing them neatly and moving on to what had to be done.

But that Jyn was so, so long gone.

\--

Moving the smilodon's body was not simple. First of all, it weighed a least a hundred and a half pounds, probably more, and they had some ways to go to get back to their camp. They eventually came up with a makeshift rig using large palm leaves, rolling the heavy carcass onto it and pulling on the leaf-tarp under to move it. Every so often they would have to stop to make way around a root or bush, and by the time they had gotten it back to camp, dawn was starting in the distance, through the trees. _They’d get a REALLY early start on their day_ , Cassian thought dryly to himself, but at least they had at least a few meals covered before the meat wouldn’t be safe to eat anymore. There was regrettably, but understandably, had no salt or ice readily available on this tropical island with which to save the rest.

Once they got the carcass onto the sand, moving it became slightly easier, and they agreed the cleaning would best be done some ways from the camp, because of the inevitable big mess. They laid out a base of leaves and did their best to clean all the sand off of it, and dug a hole nearby to bury any excess material. Jyn then returned to the camp to work on restarting their fire and rigging a makeshift roasting rack from a metal grille they had removed from the powerboat earlier.

Cassian removed his shirt to avoid staining it with blood, and hoped his dark pants wouldn’t show any stains too much. He shivered and reached back again into far recesses of his mind, memories and instructions given to him years and years ago that he usually tried to push away, hoping he could remember and more importantly, stomach, how to clean an animal like this. Again, he flashed to a distant, rarely visited memory of his mother slicing meat at a table, and young Cassian, not tall enough to see over the edge of it, watching and only aware of the _thunk_ of her knife as it slid through and cut the section into neat pieces.

Jyn and Cassian prepared everything as the first light of the day turned the sky a pale blue around them, the waves of the ocean gently rolling in and out, continuing their duty of providing the island’s ceaseless natural soundtrack. Between the chaos of the near animal attack and the what had happened shortly after between the two of them, things seemed eerily quiet and calm on the beach. Cassian sat back on his knees before the animal’s body, which was lying on the ground on its side. One of his hands was wrapped around the handle of his knife, he caught his own reflection in it for a moment, the first time he had seen it in several days - he hadn’t exactly had time to shave or inspect his appearance since the day Jyn had arrived in their midst **.** _A fateful day, truly._ He raised the knife and looked at the strip of reflection that could be seen in its narrow silver blade. His eyes, the irises so dark brown that they hid the pupil, looked weary beneath his brows and his beard was starting to look slightly unruly. He ran a hand through his hair and turned back to the work that needed to be done, trying to psych himself up.

Reaching out a hand, he slid his palm along the animal’s silvery undercoat that lined its stomach, considering where to make the primary incision. His eyes flicked to the cat’s large paws and just visible claws peeking out from the dark fur, the canine saber teeth as long as his hand, now useless vestiges, sticking out from the snout. Everything about the animal was perfectly evolved for it to be an efficient killer. _Killer, killer, killer_ , the words repeated in his head suddenly as he poised to begin the cleaning. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the thought to go away.

Cassian took a deep breath and began the unpleasant work, setting his jaw and pushing through the revulsion, much in the same way that he faced having to complete unpleasant assignments for the Alliance. Blasters usually killed cleanly - they just left a lifeless body and the acrid smell of burning flesh and clothes. He’d seen the sight enough times in his life and pushed through it every time.

The organs and other vestiges he removed with his hands, dumping them in the hole, and the slices and chunks of meat he was able to remove he placed on a leaf that he’d later use to wrap them up and move them back to their camp. Once there was a pile large enough there, he set aside his knife for a moment, sitting back on his knees and surveying his work. The cat’s shiny dark fur was matted in many places with blood along where he’d had to slice into its flesh. Now, dead, its killing power gone and its organs removed, it no longer looked threatening as before. Just a dead, bleeding carcass.

Cassian looked at his hands, which were then stained up the wrists with crimson. The sight repulsed him intensely in the moment. The expression _“having blood on one’s hands_ ” suddenly sprung into his brain. Again, that was the thing about blasters, they killed at a distance - and there was no gore or blood. He did not know why this act was making him think so much of those memories that he readily hid away as soon as they were made, but it was. Perhaps the blood on his hands made him think of all the blood he'd been responsible for spilling, yet not seeing any, unlike now. He suddenly saw faces, bodies, heard their voices and their hissed threats and their screams, those of people whose deaths he’d caused by his own hand, or indirectly through his actions. His open, shiny red stained palms began to shake.

Quickly getting to his feet, unable to bear the flashbacks, Cassian wrapped his hands around the smilodon’s front legs and began to walk backwards toward the sea, dragging it gracelessly behind him and leaving a trail of sand tinged with blood in his wake. He walked, singlemindedly wanting to get rid of all the blood, to the edge of the beach, where he ripped off his boots, and into the sea, letting the water soak his pants as he walked deeper and deeper. The smilodon’s weight was diminished by what he had removed, and even then, he did not pay it much mind. He walked further out than he had ever gone in this ocean, till the water rose to his chest, and dropped the animal’s body. He saw the water around began to twinge red, but no matter - the tide would soon wash the carcass away. There was no use in keeping it, where it would rot and attract pests and possibly other predators.

Cassian then started to scrub his hands as hard as he could possibly without breaking the skin, determined to get every speck of blood out from under his fingernails and off where it had splattered up his arms. His breath was coming faster and and his heart was pumping harder - partially from the weight he just had to drag but also part from the memories he’d been forced to relive, triggered for some reason by the seeing the blood covering his palms. As he finished his scrubbing he remembered suddenly the kiss he’d shared with Jyn and bit down on his lip, trying to push it away. She was right, they couldn’t be distracted, and he had been foolish to push himself, him and his dirty hands and his dark past, onto her. To think someone like him should deserve… such a connection. _What had he been thinking?_

\--

Jyn watched Cassian across the fire on top of which chunks of smilodon meat were now roasting. He was sitting with his knees raised and his arms resting on top of them, staring into the flames with a vaguely unsettled, distant look on his face. His eyes looked far away, like he was lost in memories. When had had returned some time ago from cleaning the smilodon carcass, his lower body was soaking wet and he was carrying his knife and boots in one hand, and the meat, wrapped in a palm leaf, under his other arm. He’d put it down next to the fire and disappeared wordlessly into the hut, emerging shortly after in a change of clothes, but still saying nothing. He had just sat down near the fire and pulled out his knife to clean it in the flickering orange glow and the pale light of the early morning.  

Jyn, turning her eyes back, checked on the meat by shifting it with the thin of metal she had been using in lieu of a fork and sat back again on her knees, idly reaching for her kyber crystal and holding it in her palm. She’d held her crystal and put her faith in it as they had tried to enter the shield on Scarif in Rogue One before the battle… and it had worked. And in the forest just then, before she saw the smilodon, she’d held it and wished and hoped for someone to find her, back in the woods. She had meant someone to come and rescue them from the island, but she _had_ wished for _someone, anyone_ . And then Cassian had arrived, seemingly unclear himself why he’d roused himself, and it had ended up being the difference between life and death for her. It could be consequential… or was it, like Chirrut had always said, _the will of the Force_? She let out a small gasp under her breath.

Looking up, she saw Cassian’s eyes on her, staring with the same flat expression.

“What?” she said assertively, a moment later, feeling uncomfortable under his gaze.

“What’s that thing you’re always fumbling with there?” he replied, scratching the side of his jaw and looking at her clasped fist. She noticed _his_ hands looked extremely… clean, like he had scrubbed them within an inch of their life.

“It’s a kyber crystal,” she explained, sliding it back beneath her shirt collar. “It was… my mother gave it to me, the last time I saw her… she believed in the Force. Her last words to me were _‘trust the Force_ ’.”

Cassian blinked, tilting his head slightly. A few moments passed where the only sounds that could be heard was the quiet sizzling of the cooking, the crackle of the fire, and the rush of the tides down at the beach, before Cassian spoke again. He himself was thinking of Chirrut and Baze and the Guardians of the Whills and all that had he had seen. Cassian, an almost life long realist, had never thought much about the Force. But something Chirrut had observed about him while they had been stuck in Gerrera’s camp jails - " _I_ _sense you carry yours with you wherever you go_ ”, had caught him extremely off guard. A prison, he was referring to. Cassian pressed his lips together, and focued back on Jyn again.

“Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Jyn replied after a few moments, the flickering of the flames reflecting in her large eyes before she looked back at him.  “I don’t think I could ever truly understand it.”.

“There’s a lot in this galaxy I don’t understand,” Cassian remarked quietly in response. And so they sat around the fire, silently listening to it crackle, and feeling the weight of the distance between them.

Jyn’s nightmare and Cassian’s flashbacks had served as dark bookends for their moment of physical congress, reminding each of them of the harsh realities of their worlds. Each had been cruel to emotional desire in the past: they shut it down quickly, they wanted it out of their lives. But being so close to each other and having to rely so intimately on each other was making this a great deal harder than it had been before. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh I know! My burn with this ship is so slow! But I’m really trying to stay as true to their characters as I can be and this is how I think they would react. Don’t worry, it’ll heat back up again quickly, so stay tuned!


	8. Focus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left feedback on the last chapter, it helped me out /a lot/ with this one. I’m really glad so many of you are enjoying this fic as much as you are. Shoutout to you all, and also, Wookiepedia - generally saving my ass always. I wanted to upload this earlier but the damn AO3 technical issues - 0____o. But, anyway, we’re here now, so - onward!

Chapter 8  \- Focus

As the day began properly, it was looking like Cassian’s prediction from the previous day - that the heat would bring a storm - would be correct. Grey clouds churned on the horizon as the day properly began, causing both Cassian and Jyn to intermittently look out at them with concern. Subconsciously they both worked extra quickly toward completing waterproofing their shelter and supply storage. They boiled extra water in case rain would keep them from building a fire for purification. Who knew how long storms could be on Scarif. Jyn thought of Lah’mu, the last place she’d lived with her parents. It was always a damp planet, where rain storms could last for days and often trapped young Jyn in their subterranean living place, bored and dissatisfied.

Thoughts of her childhood had flitted in and out of Jyn’s brain in the recent days, after they had been reawakened by revelations about her father. Little things, here and there, like the kinds of toys she played with, in secluded corners of the lands around their homestead, by herself. She thought also of the way they lived, simply, by subsistence farming on Lah’mu’s fertile, mineral rich soil. They distilled their water from a moisture vaporator and lived quietly, simply - boringly, as young Jyn thought, but now obviously she knew to what degree that was for self preservation. Something about being on the island on Scarif harkened back to that time for her, perhaps it was the very low-tech method of survival, so different for her and Cassian, who, like most inhabitants of the urban areas of the galaxy, lived highly dependently on droids and automated systems for everything in their lives.

Jyn sneaked a peak at Cassian, who was across their camp, working on moving their firewood from a pile leftover from that morning and stacking it in their new makeshift woodshed, constructed from sheets of metal from the powerboat under a tree. He was quiet about his own childhood but she suspected it had also had periods of distinct simplicity like her own. Something had happened on his planet during the Clone Wars and launched an extremely young Cassian into the fray. She remembered how he’d lashed out at her after Eadu. _Six years old_. That was three years younger than Jyn had been when she had been taken in by Saw, and certainly a lot longer before she saw real action.

They had both been extremely quiet that whole morning, both still keeping their distance after the incident in the woods, of course, but Jyn wasn’t sure if that was the only thing going on with Cassian. She couldn’t imagine _she_ could distract him that much, after all, she was set in the belief that she had been the one to press herself to him, practically having convinced herself by that point that she had completely imagined him returning her kiss. And after he had gotten back from his butchering work he looked… spooked, like he had seen something that had frightened him. He was certainly not the kind to frighten easily, she thought. Her brows furrowed slightly as she watched him, wondering what it could have been. She thought for a brief moment again of what it had been like to kiss him.

Almost immediately Jyn forced herself to pull her eyes away and cursed herself. _Focus_ \- she was losing her focus _again_ , shortly after she had reaffirmed her commitment to it. A storm was coming and they had to prepare. She’d not had this sort of problem prior to _all that had happened_ , she’d been able to maintain her single-minded lifestyle without many problems, and now she was struggling to pick up the pieces of herself. It was getting extremely frustrating to a person like Jyn, who thrived on determination and toughness, which allowed her some control in a chaotic world. Being _stuck_ , useless and struggling, on the island, wasn’t making things any easier. She was _stuck_ having to confront her struggle to focus.

A rumble of thunder on the horizon caused them both to look up. Cassian got to his feet and picked up his old shirt, the one with the burned out shoulder, which they had been using as a makeshift sack.

“I’m going to get some more fruit,” he announced, pausing for a moment before where Jyn was crouched, working on spreading another layer of the black industrial paste they’d found along the outside edges of their shelter, which they had figured out was waterproofing paste for boat leaks. Jyn checked the horizon again and looked up at him. He was regarding her with expressionlessly. The statement hadn’t been a question.  

“It’s going to start raining any minute now,” she contended uncertainly. “Maybe it would be better to wait.”

“I don’t want a storm to knock all the fruit off this certain tree - it will be fine, I’ll be back soon,” he replied, shaking off her concern and setting off back toward the beach and down the treeline. Jyn watched him stride off - long legs with arms fixed at his sides; a soldier’s gait. She gave a small sigh, little furrow appearing again between her brows. There it was again - concern, another thing she didn’t have to contend with much before _all that had happened_. She returned to her work, momentarily finding dark amusement in giving her current self a new title. Before it all, she decided she had been _Jyn Erso, Unaffiliated_ (sometimes Liana Hallik or certain other pseudonyms) - this was after she was _Jyn Erso, of Saw Gerrera’s Partisans_ and just simply _Jyn Erso_ . She considered that at the current moment, she could have been _Jyn Erso, of the Rebel Alliance_ , but she didn’t quite feel like she was “of the Rebel Alliance” yet - there was distance between her and their operations, especially after she had directly disobeyed their plans. Yet she certainly had strayed far from being _unaffiliated_.

 _Jyn Erso, of Rogue One_ , she decided. She had felt more connection to the small squadron with their made up callsign than to the full Alliance, and truly more connection than she had felt with just about anything up till that point. All because she had _purpose_ there, more than she did with Saw’s Partisans and certainly more than she did in her years as criminal drifter. Purpose and camaraderie. She pictured the faces of Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze and even Kaytoo, and gave another small sigh.

The rain started some time later and Jyn, hopping lightly to her feet, double checked that all their supplies and provisions were in places that they were covered and dry, and retreated to their shelter, which was so far holding up well. She bent down before the entrance hole and crawled in, raising herself back up to a sitting position once she was inside, hugging her knees and looking out toward the beach. She tucked back some loose hair and waited, fiddling with her necklace as she looked out for signs of Cassian on the horizon.

The more minutes that passed, the more concerned Jyn grew. She felt her well trained battle honed tendencies that kept her on her toes flare up, getting jumpy with all the waiting and not knowing. The rain outside had started to fall more heavily, it began to haze up Jyn’s view of the distant sea. The wind rustled harder through the trees above. What could possibly be taking him that long she did not know, but it was not long before the time was getting to be too much to stand. Cursing under her breath, she re-laced her boots tighter and crawled back out of the hut. Pausing to remember what direction he had gone in, she left the relative protection of their tree-covered campsite and surrendered herself to the rain.

She began at a jog down the beach, very soon feeling her bangs plaster to her forehead and her clothes start to soak through as she scanned the treeline, her heart beginning to pound faster, half from physical exertion and half from the fear of what she would find. Out in the distance, the waves were starting to roll in rougher, flat grey masses of clouds blocking out the usual blue of the sky. Because of this decreased visibility and all around greyness, and the water falling into her face, Jyn had almost run past him. When she realized what it was she was actually looking at she let out a strangled kind of sound, increasing her speed and changing course, because, lying at the base of a tree, was Cassian’s still, soaked form.

It was Jyn’s turn to come across him with her heart leaping into her throat. She sprinted up and looked at him lying in the sand for a split second before dropping quickly to her knees next to him, gasping for breath and wiping water out of her face. He was lying with his arms splayed out, one bent folded in toward his chest, with one cheek to the ground. Jyn grabbed his shoulders, careful not to lift or shake him in any way, just in case - _Force forbid_ \- he had a broken neck.

“ _Cassian!_ ” she said loudly, stammering for words in fear, over the rush of the rain and the wind and the waves. “Are you alright - Cassian, please…”

She pressed a hand to his cheek, and was relieved a moment later to see his eyes slowly opening, and him squinting, clearly just getting his bearings. He looked up at her with half open eyes, brows furrowing slightly as he looked at her uncertainly.

“ _Jyn…?_ ” he mumbled. Jyn clasped at her chest like an old woman, grateful beyond grateful that she hadn’t found him _lifeless_ like she had thought he may be for a wrenching moment.

“What happened? Are you okay?” she demanded, jumping back into the action in equal parts concern and anger, leaning closely over him, her wet hair flopping across her forehead. She had _told_ him, she’d _told him_ to wait.

Cassian’s eyes flicked to his stretched out body and to the tree above. Then he looked back at Jyn, and nodded gently. He reached up and pressed a hand to his forehead.

“Yes… yes, just fell, a short way. Tree was… slippery.”

“Of course it was,” Jyn replied immediately, her passionate feelings causing a kind of mania within. “Is anything broken, tell the truth.”  
Cassian shook his head again. He reached an arm back and Jyn, realizing she was still inches from him, backed off to give him some room to breathe with the back of her neck feeling hot. He propped himself up on an elbow and said something in a language Jyn didn’t know, brows furrowing and eyes squinting painfully as he held his forehead with a hand.

“ _What?_ ” she half shouted.

“I said - _fucking rain!_ ”

Jyn blinked and pushed her wet hair off her face.

“Let’s get back to camp,” she said firmly. She got to her feet and crouched beside him, and took him by the upper arms, helping him get to his feet. It was subconscious but she was touching him more than she needed to. He slowly got up, and returned to being taller than her, gingerly tested putting weight on his feet.

Everything seemed to be fully operational, but the pain in his head, and his back and rear was certainly present. He had been on his way back down the tree, having turned back after realizing Jyn had been right and it was too dangerous, but when he was a few feet from the base, a certain vine he had been using as foothold proved to wetter than could securely hold him, and he’d lost his footing. He’d slipped and fallen backwards, landing squarely on his rear and back, letting out a grunt of pain. His head had been thrown back and collided with the sand, sending his vision hazy and immediately doing a number on his cling to consciousness. It was unclear to him how long he’d been lying there - the next thing he knew, he heard his name being shouted somewhere in his general direction, and pressure of hands on his chest and face - Jyn.

When he’d come back to, squinting through water in his eyes and his eyesight coming back to clarity, he became aware of one thing dominating his sight. Jyn’s face, brows knitted in concern, her bangs wet across her forehead and her full lips parted uncertainty as she called for him. Her green eyes were so large and open and focused on him. They were so beautiful, that was all his confused, pain addled brain was thinking. _Jyn - beautiful, beautiful._

Cassian’s legs were fine but stiff, he had to walk slowly and press a hand to his aching lower back. Jyn was at his elbow, he could feel her centimeters away, looking at him in concern as they made their way back down the beach. Jyn, for her part, was holding back exploding at him, wanting to demand to know why he hadn’t been more careful. These strong emotions welling inside her chest were unfamiliar and confusing. She was not rational enough then to realize the comedown from the terrified feeling she’d gotten seeing him lying in the sand still in that way was being converted into this bizarre frustration. She had little experience with caring so much about someone that the emotional mind manifests the feelings in many often strange ways.

When they had gotten back to the camp, she hovered over again as he gingerly crawled back into the shelter, laying himself back down on the ground with another soft groan. Jyn crawled in after him, her heart still beating faster than its usual rate, and she  scooted herself to the other side beside him, beginning to unlace her wet boots with her lower lip between her teeth. She pulled them off and shoved them to the edge of the hut, shifting over to pick up their clean, dry sets of clothes. Forcing herself to breathe slowly, she picked up a set for Cassian and laid them down next to him with perhaps a bit more force than usual, then focused on getting out of her own wet articles. She slid her hair out of its bun and shook it out, then changed her pants in that weird wiggling way one does when they have to change pants while unable to really get up.

“Change, before you catch a cold,” she instructed in Cassian’s direction, leaning for some reason on that old wives tale of being wet and cold somehow being a catalyst for illness.

“That’s not how sickness works,” Cassian muttered, his hands still over his eyes as he lay. He pushed his wet hair out of his face, becoming aware of Jyn’s eyes on him. She was sitting on the other side of the hut (not saying much - barely a few feet away really), holding a dry shirt in her hands, with her hair down around her face as he so infrequently saw it. Her brows were furrowed so and her lower lip was jutted out in a way that he almost _felt_ the waves of negative energy rolling off her.

“Well, you’re dripping all over our blankets,” she replied tartly, after a moment. Cassian blinked at her, finding her staring back and continuing to glower. She did have a point, he thought sheepishly, yet he didn’t move.

“Thanks for helping me,” he offered, a moment later, propping himself back up onto his elbow.

“You really worried me, there.”

Her tone was a little hard for the phrase to sound comforting or caring.

Cassian felt genuinely embarrassed now, his face feeling warm as he realized again that she had warned him about this exactly and he hadn’t listened, of course. Still distracted by his flashbacks from earlier, he had strode out of the camp, only half thinking about what he was doing.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. He turned his gaze away and worked on changing his pants as best he could through the aching and the discomfort of having to sit while doing it. He slid off his wet shirt and put a new one on, appreciating its dryness on his wet skin. When he looked back at Jyn he found that had taken off her own shirt, down to just the slightly bandage like wrap that went across her shoulders and over her breasts; gentle swells that he had never seen out in his way. His face burning, he forced himself to look at her face. She had paused, holding her shirt crumpled in her hands like she didn’t notice she was nearly half naked. Her lips were pressed together - _her lips_ , they had been so ridiculously close when he’d been lying in the sand, barely inches from his own.

“Look, if you needed to get away from me for a while, you could have just said so,” she said after a moment, turning her eyes beneath knitted brows away but not moving her body. Cassian was taken aback.

“ _What?_ ” he choked huskily. “Get away… that’s not what you think I was doing, is it?”

She said nothing and didn’t look away. Cassian pressed his hand to his forehead, the pain there and in his back temporarily forgotten.

“Jyn,” he began, trying to right the wrong, and when she did not meet his gaze he reached out and placed his long fingered hand over her very small one, determined to catch her eye and for once, be clear about how he felt. Almost without realizing it, he scooted forward a few inches.

“I wasn’t trying to get away from you, alright? I don’t want to, at all. You’re… you’re all I have right now. Without you, I…”

The statement hung in the air, unfinished, as they stared at each other. Jyn was dumbfounded, her anger immediately melting away to intense surprise, her ears feeling hot as she tried to process what he had said. Cassian, for his part, was searching her face, looking at the way her brows relaxed and her eyes widened so slightly. It was entirely possible that it was a large part the delirium from his fall talking, but he was almost unable to bear the space between the two of them. The emotional side, the instinctive, hungry, long repressed side of him was close to the surface, close to breaking out again. It was far from the logic that had caused him to nod and distance himself when she had earlier laid out that their first kiss was “ _a one time moment… all adrenaline and shock_ ”.

In silence between them permeated only by the heavy patter of the rain coming down outside, Cassian reached out and picked up Jyn’s small chin in his hand. He scooted forward just a few more inches - but she did not move nor question it, simply stared at him with her stunningly green eyes as her hands lay limp in her lap, one still beneath Cassian’s hand.

“I was almost nothing before you,” he murmured, when he was inches away.

“That’s not true,” Jyn replied, breathless, in a tone just as low, disarmed completely for one of the first times in her life with him so close, with his hands holding her so gently in this way. Her heart was pounding quickly again, but for an entirely different reason than before. “If anything, I was the one who was- I mean, I…”

The nonexistent end of her sentence died in her throat as she stared, unable to look away as he gazed at her, his intense, dark eyes holding so many things she didn’t know or understand. A moment of almost unbelievable tension passed, like time around them itself has ceased to tick, like all the rain and the chaos outside did not exist. They would later, again, not be able to figure out which of them made the fateful move first, but Cassian certainly thought it was him. He leaned forward and caught Jyn’s lips in his own.

Jyn let out a small gasp from behind the kiss, unable to keep herself from leaning deeper into it, from savoring the texture of his mouth as he captured her lower lip between his own lips. His facial hair tickled her face and she raised her free hand, pressing it against the side of his head, the tips of her fingers feeling the dampness in his hair and her palm the beard around his jaw. She raised herself up higher on her knees, slinging her other arm around his neck.

Cassian, feeling explosions of passion that he had held back for years, wanted nothing more than her lithe body closer to his own. He reached her arms around her back and put his hands around her waist, easing her with as much gentleness as he could given how intensely he _wanted_ her at that moment, closer to him. He pulled himself back and down, taking her with him, the pain from before emerging with a vengeance for a moment before it overwhelmed by other feelings. Soon he was laying down with her on top of him, letting his hands run down her back, feeling earnestly the warmth of her bare skin and her softness pressed against him and discovering those curves he had been earlier so distracted by.

Jyn herself still had her arms wrapped around his neck, and her hair fell around her cheeks and brushed Cassian’s. She was then so far from that _control_ she had been thinking about earlier, but felt no desire to return to it. She was then thriving on the pressure of their bodies pressed together, the taste of his lips and the feeling of them dragging across hers. She felt new sensations in her chest and her lower body, goosebumps on her bare arms as his hands slid across her lower back. A few moments later, when their lips parted to give them a chance to catch their mutual breaths, she pulled slightly away, extracting her hand and pushing some of her hair behind her ear. Cassian was looking up at her, blinking his dark eyes, and looking breathless. Each was still putting together that what had just happened _actually had just happened._

“You’re hurt,” she stammered, the words spilling from her lips before she had much time to filter them. He was still looking at her in surprise, taking sensory stock of how close she was and what her weight like on him, and his lips curled into a small smile as he watched her.

“I’m making it worse,” she continued, realizing the actuality of their position and removing her weight from his body, sitting up and looking down at him, feeling her lips tingle.

“Worse?” Cassian murmured, raising his brows and giving a small chuckle. “I could disagree...” He reached a hand to slide under his lower back, shifting a bit, squinting his eyes in pain for a moment. A rush of concern overtook Jyn again, she leaned forward, looking worriedly at him.

“I’m sorry for snapping earlier,” she said, as he shifted around to accommodate his injuries.

“I’m sorry for being stupid and climbing a tree in the rain,” he countered, and opened his eyes again. They moved back up at Jyn, flicking for a moment from her body up to her face and her lips that he wanted back on his at the soonest possible opportunity.  “Damn it, I don’t want this pain _now…_ ”

Jyn flushed and laid her hands in her lap, feeling an intense rush of feelings within herself that finally translated to her face, and she smiled despite herself, looking away. The pragmatic side of her was returning slowly, shaking its head and looking at the scene that occurred then with disdain. She knew the instinct in the back of her head but pushed it away.

Both of them pondered each other for a few more moments, smiling unlike they were used to, niether quite sure exactly how to proceed. Certainly both wanted _more_ of what they had just had, but both worried it would be too presumptive to let this be known. Cassian tentatively reached out and picked up one of Jyn’s hands from her lap, causing her to look at him again, caught slightly off guard. He studied the way her hand looked in his darker one for a moment, tracing his thumb lightly across her knuckles and giving Jyn a fresh set of goosebumps.

“I’ll feel better if you come back down here,” he whispered, pressing her hand to his chest with both of his own, a hesitant hopefulness in his eyes as he waited for her next move, worried she would pull away again.

Jyn paused, the dark pragmatism telling her to tread lightly, but she felt an inextricable pull toward him. How nice it had been to be pressed against him like she had been.

Slowly, she made to lay herself back at his side, careful to accommodate where she knew he was sore as she curled herself gently against him. The motion felt foreign to her at the start, she felt like she was imitating something she had seen in a romance holodrama once or something, but once she warmed to his body, she started to relax more and breathe slower. It was so different than she how she usually slept beside him, turned away and inward and trying to forget he was there at all. Cassian exhaled, his face filled with contentment; he lifted her hand and brushed his lips against her the top of her fingers.

“Are we both delirious,” she muttered into his shoulder as he pulled her arm over his chest, and she wondered herself about how this moment had come to pass. Her emotions had been running high, certainly, moments before. And he _had_ hit his head. But something about the moment felt _too right_ , she felt too lucid to attribute it solely to adrenaline and mania. Cassian was silent for a few moments, breathing deeply, relishing Jyn’s warmth.

“I hope not.”

Cassian was feeling overwhelmed with tenderness as he answered. Tender was not a word most people associated with him. _Tough_ , yes, _effective_ , certainly, _clever_ , generally, _reserved_ , typically. He certainly did not have an impetus with which to act tender, or someone to act it towards, previously. But there he was, with Jyn Erso beside him, her warm body pressed against him and her hand locked in his own, providing a comforting presence. He felt his aches but with her there they were diminished. Jyn Erso, whose name had been whispered all throughout Intelligence’s ranks before they extracted her, Jyn Erso and her various pseudonyms and all the things that she had been rumored to be responsible for. An aggressive criminal, a livewire, a shady operative whose allegiances were unclear - that was all they had thought. He’d been surprised to discover, on the day they met, just how small and ordinary she _looked_. There was mutual hatred between them, he felt it when he looked into her eyes the first time.

So both of them had thought so much about the other that had proven untrue. Or, indeed - perhaps they had been true, but through the virtue of the incredible, unbelievable occurrences that they had experienced together, they had changed. Neither thought themselves, or the other, to be remotely the same person as had met and glowered at each other in the Yavin base what was amazingly so little time before. And for once, in this case, things not going according to plan was so, so sweet.

“What did you mean, before,” Jyn began quietly, hesitantly, referring to his jarring statement before he’d kissed her.. “When you said you were…”

Cassian looked at her again, turning onto his cheek and staring down at her head next to his shoulder, feeling warmth in his every cell despite the pain and the relative chillness of the rain outside.

“I meant, that before all this happened - before I met you, I should say… I was just sort of... _going about things_. Taking orders, being a cog in the machine. It was bleak… I had lost my, I mean, my fire within was... dying. But seeing what you were willing to do, how fast you were transformed. It inspired me. Thank you.”

Jyn felt her cheeks grow warm, unused to being spoken about in that way.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit. I wouldn’t have done... all that was done, if it hadn’t been for you,” she replied quietly, truthfully. Indeed it had been his selfless devotion that had caused her to rethink herself, that had motivated her to push through during the battle at the Imperial base. And on Cassian’s end, it was hearing her impassioned plea with the Alliance leadership when they had returned to Yavin that cinched for him the decision to defy orders and push into the insane mission without looking back. “ _Rebellions are built on hope!”_ he had heard her parrot his phrase, as he stood at the back of the crowd, his heart giving a flip. He had pressed his hand to his chest, overcome with a stronger emotion than he had felt in so long.

They lay there for a few minutes in the quiet, pondering the exchange, pondering how each had turned the other from nothing to something. At that point, they had very little indeed. But two things that they did have stirred them deep inside and softened away their previous hardness and apprehensions. These were two very powerful things: hope, and each other.

After the little time, Jyn raised her head every so slightly, looking up like she was checking that it was indeed him still there and it had all really happened. Cassian had been watching her through half lidded eyes, thinking just how crazy everything was and how right having her beside him felt.

He rolled slightly onto his shoulder, picked up her chin the thumb of his free hand again, and pulled her face back up to meet his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW this is NOT the last chapter, just in case it seemed like that. Let me know below if you liked this, if you'd like... more's coming soon!


	9. Connection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOO a lot happens in this one. Added some new character tags, too - some more of our precious Rogue One children will be making an appearance in this chapter and onward. Because damn it, was our time with them too short. I basically assumed about a week passed between the Battle of Scarif and the end of the events of A New Hope, so hopefully that timeline makes sense. Please enjoy!

Chapter 9  \- Connection

\- _Several days prior, Scarif_ -

 _It was done,_ that much Bodhi Rook was aware of, after he’d successfully assisted in the opening of the Scarif shield gate and the flipping of the master switch. He was standing before the console, gasping with amazement and the thrill of chaotic success when a large and stunningly direct piece of shrapnel from a nearby grenade explosion flew into _Rogue One’_ s cargo bay and hit Bodhi directly in the shoulder. The force of the blow threw him from his feet and he hit the ground, hard, smacking the side of his head against the metal plates of the ship’s floor and instantly splitting the skin at his browbone. He was only awake for a second longer, giving a cry of pain, before the world of the Imperial base launch pad and the sounds and smells of battle faded to black.

When he came to he was aware of shouts, boots of men in his eyeline, activity on the shuttle, occurring around him as he still lay on the ground near the console. Instantly he knew that his grasp on consciousness was tenuous at best. Gritting his teeth and forcing himself to stay awake, he raised himself on an aching, quivering arm and squinted. Blood from the split in his hairline and brow dripped down his forehead and cheek, a gruesome sight. He was aware of a pair of legs bending down before him, someone saying something to the effect of “ _whoa, whoa, whoa…._ ”

A man he didn’t recognize, an Alliance pilot or soldier, was staring into Bodhi’s face, grabbing him by the shoulder. Bodhi couldn’t remember much of his features, aside from the fact they were ruddy, streaked with dirt and specks of blood.

“ _Hold on, we’re getting out of here_ ,” the man had told Bodhi firmly. _“It’s over, mate, stay down…_ ”

Bodhi’s large eyes, barely open due to his weakened state, widened. _Over, it’s over_ . _The battle - but who was alive, had the plans gone through, what was the resolution?!_

 _“Jyn, Cassian, where are - where…._ ” Bodhi had managed, swivelling his head around deliriously as he tried to spot the Captain and the intrepid young woman who had risked the everything to infiltrate the base proper to get those plans. The man did not address what he was blabbering about, he just put his other hand on Bodhi’s shoulder and forced him back down into a lying down position.

“ _Just hold on, mate…”_ he had repeated, leaning over Bodhi with his brows knitted, and then behind him he shouted: _“Need medical over here, if possible!_ ”

The last thing Bodhi was aware of, before everything faded away again was his own blood dripping across his right eyelid, and an announcement over the ship’s systems.

“ _Everyone, brace yourselves for takeoff…_ ”

 

The next few days consisted of floating in an out of consciousness for Bodhi. He was lying in a bed in some kind of medical ward, he was never lucid long enough to get much awareness of exactly where he was or what was going on. The battle had taken a lot out his lean frame, and he could feel bandages across the side of his head, and the sterile smell of bacta about him.

In his disoriented dreams, he saw faces and figures - Galen Erso, holding a hand on his shoulder and looking at him with his wise, determined face. An unexpected friendship, it had been, the one between a lowly cargo pilot making deliveries to Eadu and a senior scientist and researcher that worked there on secretive, complicated Imperial projects. Bodhi Rook had never amounted to much at that point in his life - after a sickly, unremarkable childhood, he’d not made test scores high enough to make it to the starfighter piloting program, after his stint at the academy, as he had intended. Vague adolescent dreams of greatness and daring were set aside for a banal reality as another nondescript cargo ferrier in the Imperial machine, never given much respect or thought by anyone of consequences. Except, of course, Galen Erso.

Galen, who had trusted him implicitly with the the secret that he’d been keeping for years, the one he’d given his life up to conceal as he worked in the facility. _“I’ve been waiting for a long time for someone like you, Bodhi,_ ” Galen had told him in the warm, firm way that he spoke, never with condescension, always with a humble knowing tone that simply made you want to trust him. “ _I know this is a great weight to bare. If I don’t make it, never forget my deepest gratitude.”_

And so had begun the only act of true consequence Bodhi had ever committed up until that point. His defection had come with the extreme risk of detainment, the strip of his rank, probably torture and more than likely, death. But it was a risk worth taking. _I won’t let them have it,_ Bodhi had decided with himself. _I’ll take my life before I let them take mine._

There were other faces that he saw, too, the tough, serious face of Captain Cassian Andor. Cassian, who’d noticed Bodhi in the Partisan’s prison, mumbling incoherently to himself as he struggled to regain his right mind. He’d protected him from the fury of the big man in with the huge weapon - Baze Malbus, who Bodhi would later meet - and gotten Bodhi out, as Jehta City itself exploded before their very eyes. Bodhi, who himself was from Jedha originally, had quaked at the sight of Death Star’s ferocious power, but followed Cassian and the rest to safety.

Cassian was principled and selfless to the Rebellion to a fierce, nearly frightening degree. But Bodhi had watched Cassian, standing before a group of other Rebel Alliance operatives, pledging themselves to Jyn’s mission, a mission Bodhi fully knew was going to be extremely, exceedingly dangerous. He’d watched Cassian and his toughness and command and felt a strong rush of respect. Cassian was what Bodhi would have strived to become, in another life, if he had defected earlier or never joined the Empire in the first place (something he had never truly considered doing). Cassian was a man who cared and who gave it all for any possibility of a vague, unclear future where the Empire might not rule. He took that incredibly unlikelihood and put everything towards making it more likely. Bodhi thought that Galen would have respected him, too.

And then there was Galen’s daughter, Jyn, a truly extraordinary woman. Bodhi had only been given bits and pieces of her life - some from Galen himself, some from the things he’d heard Jyn and Cassian shout at each other after Eadu, some from how she was treated by the Alliance Senators. So his timeline of her life was hazy and incomplete, but regardless: he had felt confident putting himself behind her, seeing her devotion to the Cause build up before his very eyes to one stronger than probably a great deal of the Alliance foot soldiers themselves held. She had not resigned herself after getting shut down in an official capacity, showing a grit, industriousness, and dauntlessness that Bodhi deeply admired. _Rebellions are built on hope!_ It was a powerful statement that had come from her lips during the Alliance leadership meeting that Bodhi had watched, and it stirred him.

 _Hope, hope, hope…_ the words sat on the edge of his mind as he tossed and turned through fuzzy dreams. But eventually he had to wake up. And the debrief he had gotten on the actual events of the battle made him wish he could fall back into his consciousness limbo for another week.

 _Scarif base… nearly destroyed in the firefight… our sources tell us… Imperials evacuated and took their records with them…_ _probably terminated... plans received... search for survivors… Princess Leia… Alderaan..._

He remembered the phrases in pieces, so shocked was he to hear the developments regarding the plans and the drama going on somewhere far away in the galaxy with the destruction of Alderaan and the escape of the Princess. His blood had ran cold hearing about the Death Star’s power unleashed. He knew he had, inadvertently, of course, contributed to its construction. There was blood on his hands, he knew, of Alderaanians. Bodhi’s determination to redeem what he had done grew then into a single minded obsession. He had to do something, anything, whatever was needed, as soon as he was healed.

They offered him a position, too, and he’d readily accepted it - Private Rook, he’d be, once he was better and the details were worked out, when things were clearer. He’d nodded his head silently, looking away. It had been a lot of information to take in, but one single fact pained him more than the others: _most of the Rogue One crew had not made it,_ he had been told, _including, unfortunately, Captain Andor and Jyn Erso._ When he’d been left alone again in the med bay bed, he sat in silence, staring at his scarred hands and arms. He’d done his part but compared to what they’d done… he’d seen them do things that were so bold, so heroic, that he’d thought them almost as _beyond human_ . And now they were gone, and he was there - he, who’d _contributed_ to the building of the Death Star. It did not sit right with him and he held this guilt in the pit of his stomach as he waited out the rest of his stay in the med bay and then was discharged to the rest of the Rebel base where he knew almost nobody. He knew some people recognized him, by the whispers that followed him in the corners of rooms. _Imperial turncoat_ , _the defecting pilot… what was his name again?_

Bodhi had been given him a new set of clothes to replace his dirty, charred Imperial pilot uniform, which was disposed of swiftly, and a he’d been given a chance to wash, so his thin, dark, shoulder length hair was not weighed down and greasy like it had been the last few days. He’d pulled it back as usual elastic and commenced with waiting, waiting, waiting - like everyone else, trying to deal with the knowledge that the Death Star was out there and so was their only hope of destroying it. At some point, Bodhi had managed to get his his hands on the incomplete incident report from the Battle of Scarif, as it was starting to be called around the base. He had been interviewed himself for this in-progress report, a large file of disjointed witness recollections and conflicting fact sheets. _PENDING_ _OFFICIAL REVIEW AND CERTIFICATION_ large red block letters across the top of every page blared. 

The night that it had been reported that a certain young pilot named Luke Skywalker had managed to succeed to make a one in a million shot to destroy the Death Star, the base exploded in celebration. Bodhi hid himself in the tiny room that had been allotted to him and pored over the report, unable to feel much like celebrating after all he had gone through. Others had not known the Rogue One crew like he had. They didn’t know what Jyn and Cassian had really put into the fight, what they had given. He was obsessed with understanding precisely what had occurred, every inch of it - exactly what happened. Conspicuously missing were the exact reports of how the two of them had managed to remove the plans from the Imperial data vaults and send them through the dish tower. Only Bodhi had communicated with them about that, but he’d been knocked out only after he had managed to get the data link through. How they had done it and had become of them was, for all intents and purposes, a mystery.

Their names were near the the top of a lengthy casualty sheet, split up between lives and equipment. _Captain Andor, Cassian Jeron. Erso, Jyn._ Their sacrifice had been summed up in those few lines, along with a small fact that Bodhi had gawked at when he read it. Their bodies, according to the official casualty report, had never been recovered or found. Supposedly, after the Imperial evacuation and shutdown of the base on the island, there had been various flybys and aerial searches for survivors and bodies. Almost all the dead had been accounted for and their bodies removed for later burial.

Except for two, that is.

Bodhi had lay on his provided cot, with the tablet that had the official report on it still sitting loosely in his hand, and stared up at the ceiling while disregarding the noises of boisterous celebrations outside. They were gone, but their bodies had never been found.

 _They were gone, but their bodies had never been found_. And so the seeds of a nagging uncertainty were planted in the sharp mind of Bodhi Rook. Killing a person was easy - enough of his compatriots had met that fate during the battle for him to be assured of that.

But killing a notion in a living mind was a great deal harder.

_\- Scarif, the day after Cassian’s fall from the tree -_

When Jyn had returned from bathing in their creek spot that morning, she found, to her surprise, Cassian sitting shirtless on a log in the sun outside their hut, holding up a spare shard of metal from the powerboat and squinting into his reflection at it. She paused just outside their camp, watching him for a moment in the trees, unable to keep a small smile from her face.

After their heart to heart and their kiss the previous evening they’d talked quietly a little more, relishing each other’s company and how it was to hold the other, but it was clear that Cassian needed to sleep off his injuries. And their sleep had been cut short that morning by the smilodon attack, after all - Jyn was amazed by just much happened in that one day. She’d coaxed him to it, humming softly under her breath a vague melody that she’d cleared the cobwebs off of from the back of her memory, something her mother used to hum to her. She’d laid beside him and hummed, not having any problem with waiting and just being with him until he had drifted off, his breath getting slower and heavier. Though it was only late afternoon, he had fallen asleep and stayed that way until Jyn herself had turned in for the night. He’d half woken up for a moment when she slid back down beside him, mumbling something incomprehensible under his breath and rolled onto his shoulder toward her. She’d smiled to herself and scooted in, allowing him to drape his arm over her waist and press his forehead to her hair as she lay with her back to him. The next morning she’d woken and he’d still been sleeping, amazingly, so she chuckled to herself and went to bathe.

Jyn who stood in the trees later that morning, smiling at her feet like a young girl, was amazed at how pleasant and euphoric it was to know he… well, that he wanted her too. She allowed herself to really examine his appealing features, the charming sort of way he mussed with his hair and sat slightly slouched in with his skin shining in the sun. She stepped back into the camp.

“Enjoying the sun?” she teased softly. Being that this was about to be their first long interaction since what had happened yesterday, she was slightly hesitant in her approach, not quite sure how to interact with him now. They had had their casual moments before but now things were certainly different.

Cassian looked up quickly, finding her after a moment, standing a few feet away with her wet, washed hair in a loose knot at the nape of her neck, looking at him slightly bashfully. He was not sure if there was anything he’d ever found more endearing, and his cheeks turned up in a smile that warmed his eyes thoroughly. _She seemed to glow,_ he thought, _she was so beautiful with her understated smile._

“A lot more than the rain, I can tell you that,” he said, continuing to look at her happily, and laying down the piece of metal he had been trying to see himself in, finding it rather difficult to make it out much detail. In his other hand, he held his multi tool with the tiny scissor attachment extended.

Jyn crossed the space between them.

“Trying to give myself a trim, if you must know,” Cassian continued, holding up the piece of metal and squinting at his reflection dissatisfied in it. Jyn’s brows bent curiously.

“Why, it’s just me out here,” she said, sitting down beside him on the log. “No superior officers to impress.”

Cassian looked at her, excitement and amusement sparkling in his eyes. He wanted to reach over and kiss her again but he too was cautious, still getting a feel for how they stood. He studied the graceful curve of her cheek, the slight part in her lips, and reached over to scratch his jaw, feeling his cheeks warm with the enchantment of a young new lover gazing at the object of their affections. He too felt like a much younger, less hardened man, in that moment.

“I don’t like it this unruly,” he countered, lifting up the piece of polished metal and inspecting his warped reflection in it again. The edge of Jyn’s smiling face was reflected on one end now, too, he relished the sight of them, together, for a moment. “And it itches, not that you would know. A real mirror would help a lot more.”

“I could help you…?”

Jyn said it after a pause, hesitantly, looking at his handsome face in profile, her hands resting loosely in her lap. He turned to her, smiling crookedly, his brows raised.

“I mean, I used to cut hair, and all that,” she stammered, unused to feeling disarmed by a man like this. “When I was with the Partisans. There were never many, er, women around, and they all thought I did it best.”

Cassian chuckled, and held out his multi tool to her, putting down the poor substitute for a mirror.

“Just don’t cut me,” he instructed. “I’m all yours.”

The latter half of the statement caused a small thrill in Jyn’s chest. She set aside the things in her lap and positioned herself to stand on her knees before him, pausing to get the the best bearings on how to maneuver the little scissors.

“It must have been strange… being with the Partisans, and all,” Cassian observed, watching her. Jyn squared up before him and took hold of his chin with one of her hands, tilting her head and considering from where to begin her barbering. She turned his face slightly to the side and up as she put her scissors to the edge of his jaw to trim at his beard there. In the meantime, she spoke up again to address his observation.

“Oh, well… it was what it was. They didn’t know much what to do with me at first, I was quite young at the start. But Saw kept me tight under his wing. He was quite close with my father… and a good friend of mine.”

Cassian paused, watching her out of the corner of his eye as she trimmed at his facial hair. He pondered what it must have been like to become a woman amongst that rough sort of crowd - not easy. He thought of his own maturation among the ranks of the Rebel Alliance, rushing through a series of memories of a time where he had been a younger, looser, less rigid version of himself. Stealing glances at the pretty daughters of Alliance Senators across tables during early teenagerdom, remembering how his mouth had dried when he’d found them looking back at him, smiling gently. He had whipped his eyes away and told himself to focus. Then in slightly later years, on the cusp of manhood, awkward, somewhat stilted flirtatious interactions with female Alliance pilots and linguists - he had never been much a smooth talker. Having to put the moves on targets and informants on his various Intelligence missions in the field involved him doing his best imitation of a smooth, rugged, confident kind of man. Lying and putting on airs was more effective in capturing the attention of women than was just Cassian, being his stilted self.

But little had ever stuck past… well, past the bare attraction phase, fumbling physical encounters and discoveries. He’d just been too devoted to his work, too deeply involved and too emotionally closed off to really be what would be called _in love_ . Deep connections with other people were few and far between for him - he’d always had a lonely kind of life. Jyn was his first in a long time, and the first woman he’d been romantically entangled with, for lack of a better phrase, in a.... great while. Of course, nobody had ever been like _her_. Nobody had been through things like the two of them had been. He looked at her and decided nobody had been more beautiful to him, either.

He thought of their own relationship thus far and the thought sprung into his mind that he had no idea if she’d even been with many men prior to himself. But then again, what _did_ he know? So much of her past was a big question mark, including… that aspect of her. He quickly looked away, hoping she could not feel his skin warm at his own surprise and embarrassment that his mind had gone to that place so quickly. Cassian told himself to calm down.

He looked back up, finding Jyn looking into his eyes, and tilting his head.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked curiously, as she gently tilted his head to get at the other side of his jaw.

“Just… my younger days,” he replied after a moment, realizing she must have caught onto his squirming. Jyn, focused on her work, gave a crooked smile.

“I wonder what it could have been like if we’d met earlier,” she mused. “If you all thought I was reckless now… you should have seen me at age fifteen.”  
Cassian paused, trying to imagine a younger, more hotheaded Jyn. He thought he could picture it decently, an even shorter, more round faced version of her, glowering - the thought made him chuckle.

“I know they say not to ask this of a woman, but… how old are you?”

Jyn caught his eye for a moment, her eyes sparkling with amusement. Noticing a strand of wet hair falling into her face, Cassian instinctively reached forward and pushed it back. She smiled, looking down for a moment before returning to her work, turning the scissors flat to trim further.

“I’m twenty two. How old are you?”

“Twenty six.”

“So, when I was fifteen… you were nineteen.”

“Nineteen…” Cassian muttered, trying to move his face as little as possible to avoid disrupting her work. “I was… uh, skinnier.”

Jyn laughed softly, it was an incredibly pleasant sound to Cassian’s ear. He repressed the urge to grin as to not disrupt her trimming. She shifted her hand’s position on his face, cradling his jaw more deeply with her palm and using the thumb of her other hand to brush out the hair of his mustache a little bit, her brows furrowing ever so slightly in concentration, and her teeth biting down a bit on her lower lip. Between this sight and the feeling of her fingers brushing against his mouth, Cassian was unable to think straight.

“Careful there around my lips,” he muttered, when she paused to brush some hair trimmings off his chin. “Those are important to me.”

Jyn felt the back of her neck get warm. Indeed, this intimate interaction was intensifying her desire to kiss him, touch him again. Running her hands around his chiseled jaw and leaning in so she was inches away was more than slightly maddening in that respect.

“Alright,” she said after she had finished, and brushed any stray trimmings off. He looked a bit more like the day when he had first met her, with his beard trimmed closely again. She folded the scissors back into the multi knife and laid her hand under his face again, reaching her other hand forward to brush few strands of his hair a certain way. He watched her with his dark eyes, feeling slightly triumphant for some reason - triumphant that he had won over her.

Smiling, Jyn sat down with her legs folded to her side, picked up the piece of polished metal, and handed it to Cassian, who inspected his reflection in it, unable to keep himself from smiling too. Jyn could not help but remark how she loved his grin with his subtle dimples, and the way his the apples of his cheeks rose and crinkled at the edge of his eyes. _Stardust feeling starry-eyed,_ she thought to herself dazedly.

“Thank you, I think I look pretty good... for a castaway,” Cassian observed, turning his eyes back to Jyn. They both hesitated for a moment, now knowing how to proceed. Cassian, after another pause, leaned forward, keeping his eyes locked on Jyn’s. She met his gaze with a sort of breathless anticipation, her eyes flicking to his lips for a split second. Cassian reached out to lay a hand on one of hers and kissed her softly again.

“I think you do too,” Jyn murmured when they parted, and allowed herself to kiss him for a little longer. Both of them knew there was more work to be done that day that needed to get started and neither wanted to break away, but silently, mutually pulled away soon after.

“Let’s get going then,” Jyn vocalized a few minutes later. Cassian nodded, reluctantly agreeing, and sitting back against the log.

“Okay, but I owe you,” he said, smiling slyly at Jyn who bit down on her lower lip. “I’m going to go jump in the ocean for a minute and then get to work.”

Jyn titled her head, raising a brow in amusement.

“Huh?”

Cassian moved his multi tool to the log and bet down to unlace his boots.

“It’s a beautiful day and I haven’t swam at a beach in years,” he said, voice slightly muffled as he bent his head down. “Feel free to join me.”

Jyn crossed her arms over her chest, chuckling, and watched him. Cassian got to his feet, having removed his shoes, then strode off down toward the beach. Jyn turned herself to watch him walk away, unused and dazzled by this side of him. He made it all the way to the water’s edge before he loosened the drawstring on his pants and stepped out of them, tossing them aside. Jyn’s eyebrows shot up - she did not exactly expect the sight. He was pretty far off so there wasn’t too much that could be clearly seen but she did not exactly look away, she simply stood there with her mouth slightly agape.

Cassian had strode up to his torso into the warm, gentle waves of Scarif’s ocean and dove beneath the surface. Jyn couldn’t help but giggle to herself. He seemed so free. So unlike the cagey, reserved sort of person she’d met upon their first introduction.

It was an extremely pleasant sight.

\--

They ended the day as they had similarly in the last few, by sitting around the fire and having their meager dinner. This time around, the conversation was slightly more animated than it had been in the past, as they were more relaxed around each other. They sat across from each other with the fire between them and traded stories - Cassian told Jyn some of the non-depressing occurrences from his time with the Alliance (distinctly fewer of these than was the straight depressing ones), and Jyn recounted some of her positive memories of Saw and his Partisans, and some of amusing stories from her time on her own. They smiled and laughed at each others’ tales, but there was an unsaid sort of melancholy about them, since the discussion made reminded of the truth of their situation, as much as recent events had mellowed the pain of that knowledge, and the fact that they knew nothing about what was going on in the galaxy beyond their little deserted island.

In actuality, they had no idea whatsoever how big the island was. Perhaps it wasn’t an island at all, but part of a larger landmass, and somewhere in the trees, a Imperial base could have been sitting. The idea had occurred to them both, as had the thought that the other base, where the battle had taken place, was not _that_ far away, and that the Death Star was real and operational. There were plenty of anxieties on which their minds could linger if they allowed them. Jyn decided it had to be addressed in some capacity, little as she wanted to spoil the day’s good mood.

“I was thinking,” she began, after a short stretch of silence. “We should consider coming up with some kind of… plan. In the case that the… well, in case we’re discovered.”

Cassian looked into the fire, its flickering light reflecting on the sharp lines in his face. He nodded slowly.

“I agree,” he replied huskily after a moment. “I guess, _run into the forest and pray_ is a little vague.”

Jyn brushed her fingers against her necklace.

“I think we can come up with a reasonable plan.”

They threw around some ideas, such as considering the construction of some kind of bunker, or picking a specific rendezvous spot that was secluded enough, or even climbing up and hiding in trees if it was necessary. Overall, their discussion was inconclusive, but not unproductive - they agreed to decide within the coming days. As Cassian leaned forward to break up the remainder of their fire before they went to sleep, Jyn hugged her knees and stared up at the sky, at the stars and planets again. Who was out there, if anyone, and who would find them first - _if anyone._ The thought caused her to shiver again.

Cassian brushed off his hands and looked up, seeing Jyn in a way he frequently did, with herself curled in, her eyes on the sky, and her hand at her chest where that necklace hung. He felt a rush of affection, knowing he could empathize exactly with her thought process. He had tried to stave off thoughts of rescue since they had arrived, knowing in his logical mind the unlikelihood of it. He pictured Kaytoo again, rattling off a series of depressing statistics about it. _“And there would be a ___ probability you would get rescued, significantly lower than your probability of starving to death.”_

Cassian looked at Jyn again, her delicate face his only respite in the barrage of unpleasant thoughts.

“ _Y_ _ou fell for her? I had calculated the percent chance of this occurring to be pretty high, you know, but I held my voice box.”_

The corner of Cassian’s mouth flicked up sadly and he crossed over to Jyn, holding out a hand to help her up. She slid, almost instinctively, into his arms and they hugged for a few moments in the darkness, both of their eyes trained at the sky. Both remembered what Jyn had said to Cassian moments after she had made the successful transmission from the communications tower on the Imperial base. _“You think anyone is listening?”_

Cassian leaned down and kissed Jyn, wanting to think of it no longer, one arm wrapped around her shoulders and the other holding gently the back of her neck. Her hands slid to his chest and his neck, one rising to hold him gently across the face. Their kiss quickly deepened and they pulled at each other’s lips more hungrily, their breaths and heart rates quickening in their chests. Each felt the sensations of arousal in their lower halves, something they hadn’t felt in a while. Cassian tightened his grip around Jyn’s shoulders, his hand sliding down her back and waist as he desired her body closer to his. Jyn’s arm snaked around his neck, their chests pressing more tightly together.

When they broke apart both looked at each other in surprise, aware that their breaths were coming slightly at a pant. Neither had expected the small explosion of passion.

“Right, uh, should get to sleep,” Jyn mumbled, her hands sliding out from around him. Cassian gave a vague, distracted nod, looking down at her and realizing how much his body yearned for hers. He reminded himself to calm down again but he struggled, watching the way her hips swung as he followed her into the hut.

They sort of awkwardly found their spots and unlaced their shoes. Jyn fumbled with the laces, her mind distracted with the sudden mental image of Cassian naked from earlier that day. She bit down on her lower lip, reminding herself that there was still focus to be kept. Her gaze darted at him leaning down with his hair falling into his forehead and his broad shoulders curved in, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

They laid down after this in the dark, neither sure exactly how to handle the situation anymore. Jyn knew his shoulder was inches away from her own, damn it, she could feel his body heat and hear him breathe, and her own heart was thudding rather annoyingly hard in her chest, so much that she irrationally thought he might be able to hear it.

“Well, goodnight,” Cassian said after a bizarrely long moment of silence, trying not to look at Jyn for he knew exactly what was on his mind and did not wish for her to feel like he was imposing it in any way. He heard her head turn, or rather he felt it, because she was so close.

“Do I get a goodnight kiss?”

The statement was completely unexpected, and Cassian turned his head, surprise evident in his face. In the dark, he made out the outline of Jyn’s face, her own eyes looking slightly wide like maybe it had surprised her just as much. For all intents and purposes he was unable to _not_ acquiesce her request, and hesitantly propped himself up on an elbow.

Cassian looked into her face in a tension filled moment before he leaned down and captured her lips in his own, letting his hand fall across her shoulder. It was not long before the passion of the moment outside returned - Jyn’s arms wrapped around Cassian’s neck and back, and his hand slid down her neck and breast and to her waist. The space between their bodies closed and their inhibitions diminished as they kissed with a new sort of desire, this one less emotional and more physical.

It wasn’t long before there were hands under shirts and kisses along necks. Cassian pressed his mouth to the spot just beneath Jyn’s ear, causing her to give a small gasp of surprise at the goosebumps that it caused her, which only served to arouse him further. He fumbled for the bottom of her shirt and dragged it up her torso, and she finished the job by pulling it the rest of the way off her upper body, which simultaneously wrung her hair loose of its knot and caused it to fall around her bare, pale shoulders. Cassian eagerly felt along them his hands, relishing her softness and warmth. He pulled his own shirt over his shoulders a few moments later. Jyn had felt few things more delicious in a long time than the feeling of the bare skin of her torso to his chest.

It escalated in this fashion for some time longer before Cassian pulled away, forced to inquire about if this was going to go all the way, his question about if she had done such things before answered on its own. Jyn quickly nodded, quicker than she had expected, in fact, almost before he’d finished asking. Cassian grinned, looking at her flushed face and the curves of her nearly naked form beside him.

“You’re too beautiful,” he stammered, taking the moment to drink in the sight during which he felt like his throat was tightening. Jyn’s lips curved into another excited, irresistible smile, and she pulled him back down to her.

And, just a bit of time, they allowed themselves to forget their many fears and worries and the incredible precariousness of their position, and simply _indulge_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is the extent of the lemons/smut. Hope that was alright for those who were looking forward to that, lol. There will not be any pregnancy or etc plot lines just in case anyone is wondering. More Bodhi next chapter!


	10. Last Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say - I fucking love writing about Bodhi?! My /son/. Please enjoy.

Chapter 10  \- Last Hope

Bodhi had watched the medal ceremony for Han Solo and the boy pilot, Luke Skywalker, from a corner in the back of the hall. He was silent and still, dressed in the nondescript uniform that Alliance pilots had worn under their flight suits - charcoal grey pants similar button down shirt with the Alliance's curved logo stitched onto a patch on the shoulder. He’d looked at it a few times, still getting used to no longer being branded on all his uniforms with the Imperial wheel-like insignia.

They had offered him, and the rest of the Rogue One survivors, a chance to get similar commendation at the ceremony, but as far as Bodhi was aware, none of them, himself included, had agreed to it. Certainly most of them must have felt that given that their actions were done in direct opposition to official orders, agreeing to get a medal for what they had done was taking it a little far. Not that their actions would not pass on into legend, albeit more quietly than the action of Solo and Skywalker and Princess Leia. Bodhi himself had no desire to stand in front of the rest of the assembled Alliance and Yavin base staff, so that they could all get a good look at him, the defector, many of whom he correctly assumed still eyed him with suspicion. He wanted no praise - he still had plenty to atone for.

Directly after the ceremony had concluded, the hastily planned evacuation of the Great Temple base on Yavin began. The Empire, rumored itself to be in the midst of chaotic changes of leadership and organizational struggles, had learned of its location and while they probably were not able at that moment to orchestrate a coordinated attack - the Death Star being destroyed, and all - but Alliance leadership had still decided it would be wisest to leave and scatter the troops and fleet as they scouted for another location for a base.

The evacuation had every person on the base packing and loading and organizing, getting orders and saying goodbye to friends as the entire Alliance fleet descended upon and lifted off from Yavin to get everyone and everything of importance out. The general orders had been clear - _take only what you need._ Getting everyone out of harm's way was paramount. Bodhi, whose affairs had still not been fully organized since his return to the base, had not gotten any specific orders - he suspected he hadn’t been inputted into the system yet. And nobody really knew him enough to figure that out. So he walked, with some aimlessness, onto the busy hangar, in a sort of daze. He had no possessions to remove and and nobody questioned what he was supposed to be doing. His eyes scanned the hangar, searching for a familiar face or a place where he might help out, in _some_ way. It was not like he couldn’t load cargo or direct a ship, if he was asked.

At that moment, everything about his existence was a big question mark. He knew he could not return to his lodgings at a certain Imperial base - they were pathetic anyway, and there was a target on his back, especially if the Imperials figured out that he’d been a part of the Battle of Scarif. The thought had crossed his mind that he might consider going into hiding but remembering the sacrifice of Galen made him quickly abandon the option. He had to do _something_ , something to help. But without Galen, and especially Cassian and Jyn, who’d rescued him and believed in him, he had nobody to turn to for guidance.

A curious sort of sight caught the edge of his gaze, and caused his eyes to widen. Some yards away, a somewhat odd looking person could be seen next to one of the open cargo ships that was being loaded by base workers. He stood out because he was, for one, very different looking from rest of the base’s foot soldiers in their uniforms - he was dressed in a long, dark blue robe and rested his hands on a staff he held before him. Even from a distance Bodhi could make out his milky blue eyes, not focused at the activity around him - though Bodhi knew that that certainly didn’t diminish his awareness too much. Chirrut Îmwe, the blind protector who’d pulled the master switch. He was sitting on a shipping container while the cargo was being loaded around him, looking rather thoughtful.

“Chirrut!” Bodhi called, striding over, quite thankful to see a familiar face. He’d heard confirmation that Chirrut and his guardian had survived the battle but had yet to see them around the base. Chirrut rose his head, turning his ear rather than his eyes towards Bodhi, and gave a small grin.

“Our intrepid young pilot,” he said, as Bodhi approached, raising and waving a hand vaguely. “Good to hear that you are well.”

“Well, I’m, er, alright,” Bodhi had replied, stopping before the shipping container on which Chirrut rested. “Where’s Baze?”

“I’m right here,” a gruff voice came from the dimness near the starship’s nose, and the large, heavy form of Baze Malbus approached. He clapped Bodhi on the thin shoulder when he arrived before him, hard so that Bodhi had to make sure it didn’t throw him off balance. He smiled at the two of them.

“Just making myself useful,” Baze finished, fixing Chirrut with a slightly contemptuous look. Questions raced through Bodhi’s mind.

“You’re leaving - where are you going? Are you staying with the…?”

Baze answered him, shifting his weight onto his other leg and clearing his throat.

“We are leaving - procured a ride with one of the pilots here.”

He explained how they were going to find a place to lay low for some time - a certain distant planet was in mind - to figure out what they were going to do. Their home and their reason for staying on Jehta - as Protectors of the Kyber Temple - was gone, after all.

“We will find a place,” Chirrut had interceded sagely, raising a hand. “It will be where the Force wills us to be.”

“Force or not, I am sure there will be some looking involved… but we have lived through this. We will find a place. ” Baze added and repeated, but he did not look sadly at Bodhi. In fact, they both looked more peaceful than Bodhi had seen them before. He was glad for them, in fact, knowing they had volunteered without question for the Scarif mission. _The last of the Guardians_ , Bodhi thought to himself, thinking demolished Jehta City. At least they, if not he, knew where they were headed.

“And you, young Bodhi. You have joined the ranks, have you not?” Chirrut asked, tilting his head slightly as if reading Bodhi from a distance.

“Er, sort of - yes, I think. I’m looking for my orders,” Bodhi stammered in his usual jumpy way of speaking.

“There is discomfort in you.”

It wasn’t a question. Bodhi gave a small sigh, shifting his feet pushing some loose strands of hair back across his forehead.

“I just don’t… know where I am headed. I have nothing, all I had was my… mission.”

“And you executed it fatefully,” Baze replied approvingly. He clapped Bodhi hard on the shoulder again. “Best of luck to you, boy. You have a lot more in you than I would have thought.”

Bodhi gave a hesitant, crooked kind of smile.

“Thank you. Good luck to you too.”  
Baze smiled back roguishly and returned to his loading work, leaving Bodhi and Chirrut alone. Chirrut tilted his head again.

“You never have nothing - there is always the Force. Your path has been unique. But… I sense some _other_ doubt clouding you.”

Bodhi should have been unsurprised at the mysterious monk-fighter’s accurate assessment of his condition. He shifted his feet uncomfortably, looking around the busy hanger, where the evacuation preparations, hundreds of people strong, were in full effect. All these people, all their focus and determination- and there was Bodhi, feeling that nothing was certain. And his thoughts were never far from Scarif. He was struggling with seeing the base without Captain Andor or Jyn coming around the corner, engrossed in discussion and holding themselves with the urgency and confidence he’d seen before.

“I can’t stop thinking about… I can’t believe they’re _dead_.” Bodhi confided more quietly, looking at Chirrut’s flat, stern face, forcing himself to say the last word. Even then he couldn’t push away the doubt that he’d gained from reading the report.

He was suddenly struck with the worry that he might never be able to push it away, that it would live in the back of his head always, nagging, bothering, guilting in his gut. _They saved you, they trusted you, and you left them._ He knew he didn’t _leave them_ , he’d been incapacitated, but it was difficult not to think of it in that way. Not having been awake and helping search for them made him feel somewhat responsible. The fact that he did not know what went on in the time between he had been knocked out and the ship had taken off was agonizing. _Did a search take place? Was everything possible done to try to rescue them?_ It would be a mystery that would haunt him for a long time, he thought. He pressed a palm to his forehead for a moment realizing his hands were starting to quiver.

Bodhi was unprepared for when Chirrut reached out, sharply grabbed one of his wrists, and leaned slightly forward, his voice growing quieter.

“You are not sure of it either,” he correctly surmised. Bodhi, his eyes wide, shook his head, and when he realized that this wasn’t effective when addressing a blind individual, he vocalized.

“I can’t help but wonder,” Bodhi replied after a pause, slightly breathlessly. The distracting quality of the buzz of activity around him melted away at the revelation that he was not the only one with doubts. “Something feels… off.”

He took a wild stab, unable to tell if it was appropriate, but went for it anyway.

“What does… the Force tell you?”

Bodhi would have felt more ridiculous saying it had the situation not been as grave as it was. A lowly pilot such as himself never had much time for mysticism or abstract faith but, recent revelations had taught him doubt less and open his mind more. Things in the galaxy were nothing like he’d thought, that was for sure. Chirrut gave a small smile at the statement, looking away and nodding to himself.

“The Force speaks not in absolutes,” he replied after a moment. “But our doubts - they are there for a reason. There is little I can do about it, it does not seem to be my path. But, you-”

He was suddenly interrupted by the call his name by Baze, who was standing near the entrance to the cargo ship while some other uniformed Alliance members were climbing aboard. He gestured for Chirrut to come.

Chirrut took a deep, centering breath and released Bodhi’s hand. He slid to his feet and leaned back on his staff, nodding to himself.

“Your path has been extraordinary,” he remarked to Bodhi in their remaining moments. “Do not doubt this was the way it was meant to be. Trust the Force.”

Bodhi was about to say “ _Good luck_ ” to the sage warrior, but stopped himself, knowing Chirrut did not believe in luck. He smiled to him.

“Thank you,” he decided. Chirrut grinned toward him.

“You too. Goodbye, Bodhi.”

And with that, he walked off, staff clicking unsuspectingly. He disappeared a few moments later into the ship’s bay with Baze following behind, toting two small bags of provisions. Bodhi was left, staring after them, with his lips parted slightly as his mind began to race.

What he had to do was suddenly clear. He was still dogged with general uncertainty and a lack of confidence, of course, but he knew if he did not try the action on his mind, he’d never sleep soundly again. He thought again of Galen - so many gone in this fight. If there was any chance some who were thought to have perished actually had not, Bodhi _had_ seek them out. Jyn and Cassian had never for a second given up on him, and he could not give up on them just yet.

Turning on his heel, Bodhi Rook strode back toward the base facilities, peeling through the hundreds of people who paid him, and his insane personal mission, no mind.

\--

“I’m looking for Senator Moth-” Bodhi began, as he walked into one of the Yavin base control rooms where he was told he could find Senator Mothma, and the words died in his throat when he discovered the sight within. Mothma was was standing at a table with a large screen on it, a hologram hovering above showing a map of some sort, and was surrounded by a number of other uniformed officers. Bodhi stopped in the doorway, feeling the fervency with which he had set out onto his mission get slashed by _actually_ having to face the powers at be head on. He swallowed heavily.

Mothma looked up, her wise, light colored eyes landing on Bodhi in the doorway with some surprise in them. She turned back to the officers around her and gave a small nod and smile.

“That’ll be all, everyone, you’re dismissed,” she told them, and someone turned off the hologram on the table. The rest of the officers dispersed, all starting to speak amongst one another as they headed for the exit, some eyeing Bodhi curiously as he shuffled to the side to let them pass. Mothma stayed at the table, watching him with a neutral expression on her face.

“You - Rook, was it?” a voice from the darkness said, and Bodhi saw the figure of General Draven, as he remembered him to be called, step forward to stand adjacent to Mothma at the table. He crossed his arms over his chest beneath a stern, lined face lit with the blueish glow from the screen below, but Bodhi hadn’t missed how he’d slid his hand from the weapon holstered against his leg. Clearly, Bodhi’s face - and his story - was known.

Bodhi, eyes fixed nervously on Draven, quickly nodded, as the last of the officers left the control room, leaving it quiet and empty except the two figures within.

“You aren’t authorized to be up here, Private,” Draven continued in his hard tone. “We’re evacuating - you have orders to be carrying out.”  
Mothma stayed silent, still watching Bodhi with her even expression, though Bodhi thought she did look somewhat curious.

“Er, yes, I know… sir,” Bodhi stammered back, looking from Draven to her. “I never got- I mean, I was never given official duties, I came to-”

“I’m sure you could get those from a commanding officer on the ground. Time is of the essence, Private.”

Bodhi swallowed again.

“I know, sir - please, I need a word with Senator Mothma… sir.”

Mothma tilted her head and glanced at Draven, who was glowering and had opened his mouth to reply something but stopped, deferring to the Senator.

“The General is right,” she began in her smooth, diplomatic sort of voice. “Private…”

“Rook, Bodhi Rook.”

Mothma gave a small, polite nod in his direction.

“But… if it _is_ urgent - what is it?”

Bodhi cleared his throat. This was going to be the true test. If he could not get official permission for what he needed to do, things were going to get a lot more complicated. He was already an enemy of the Empire, losing the support of the Alliance would leave him, who literally had nothing - no clout or a single credit - to his name outside of the base at that given time, in an even more complicated position. He summoned his strength, thinking of the way Jyn and Cassian would handle this situation.

“Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor,” he began, licking his lips nervously. “Their bodies were not recovered.”

“We’re familiar with the official report.” Draven observed icily. Bodhi nodded at him quickly, pushing himself to get to the point.

“We need to- rather, they risked everything for this mission. Scarif is empty, and but if they weren’t found on the island, then… then I think more resources need to be directed toward resolving their case, Senator - General.”

“What are you implying, Private?” Mothma inquired evenly. Bodhi realized it was then or never. He put everything on the line, speaking quickly before he lost the resolve to make the official request.

“Requesting permission to embark on another reconnaissance mission to Scarif, Senator. If I could just take a ship and look-”

 _“What exactly do you think is going on here?_ _”_ General Draven interrupted, taking a further step forward, his eyes narrowed at Bodhi and his patience clearly wearing thin. “We’re in the middle of an evacuation. The Empire is - well, obviously, _angry_ , and they could be headed here this instant. And you are trying to request resources, you of all people - you’re a wanted man, Private! I know the Empire is prone to inefficiency but I hardly thought they did not teach their people the meaning of _respecting rank._ ”  

 _Their people_ \- it stung like a needle being shoved into Bodhi’s arm. The implication was clear.

“Yes, I know, but if I could just - look, I would just have go and take a look around - at least if there was any indication they’d been captured, I could find it, I just-”

“Were you not a _cargo pilot_ in your past position?” Mothma inquired. Her brows were knitted. Bodhi knew they thought he was hardly the man for the job.

“Yes, Senator, I was. But I was also a defector, and I almost died for it, almost died in a prison on Jehta but Cass- Captain Andor and Jyn Erso, they saved me. I’m not- look, I know how scattered the recovery missions were after Scarif- you’ve seen the report, you know it’s a mess!”

“I would advise you to _watch your tone,_  Private...” Draven warned, his arms tightening over his chest. Bodhi didn’t stand down - the passion of his plea and conviction was propelling him to speak in a way he almost never had.

“I’m sorry, Senator, General,” he began again hastily. “But I cannot live with the possibility that they could still be out there, somewhere, and we did not assist them because of, excuse me- shoddy reconnaissance.”

Mothma blinked, pulling herself back slightly.

“Our resources have been spread thin, and they continue to be,” she defended in a measured way. “We simply haven’t been able… we couldn’t risk that at this moment, not with the Empire looking at us they way they are now.”

“We have to act _now_ , if there is any chance they’re still… they won’t be for much longer, is the point!”

“What makes you think you could possibly the one we send for this sort of insanity you’re suggesting, Private?”

Draven again. Bodhi felt like like he was being verbally gutted by him with every passing phrase but continued to hold his ground.

“Because I’m the only one you have who knows nothing,” he replied steadily. “I’m optimal - look, I know nothing about your operations. If they caught me… I know nothing of consequence now - that they could extract from me. I know my way around the Outer Rim, and I’m not needed here as much as the others. I am not… not the vital asset to you - that others are. All I have is myself, nobody to worry for me. I would be a nonliability if taken. Please, just…”

He looked from face to face and his words died, because he could see that between Mothma and Draven, there was little faith in him or indication that he might get what he wanted. He swallowed again and pressed further, unwilling to let this die because he couldn’t convince them thoroughly enough. What he spoke next was perhaps the most consequential speech he’d ever given.

“Captain Andor - he was... _is_ , among your best. I knew him for barely two days and I figured out as much. He’s cut from such a cloth - there just _so few_ people like that. He sacrificed everything, his whole career, his life - to the Cause and to get those plans. There wouldn’t be an Alliance right now if it wasn’t for him. He didn’t pause for a second, and- and Jyn Erso, too! She’d never been given _anything_ but pain from the galaxy, and she did the exact same - in fact, she _led us_! She rose at your most desperate, dark hour - when the Alliance was unable to! I saw her transform before my very eyes - even after you tried to kill her father.”

A vein pulsed in Draven’s forehead, and he looked away. Bodhi felt his breath coming slightly harder.

“I just watched the Alliance hang medals on Skywalker and Solo,” Bodhi continued, softer, stepping forward till he was almost at the table, his large dark eyes wide as he looked at Mothma, practically pleading. “ _How_ can we honor them so, and close the case on Cassian and Jyn - who laid the way for their success - without a proper search party?”

“I’ve heard enough of this,” Draven interceded finally, returning his gaze, uncrossing his arms and putting them back at their side. Her lips were a thin, light line across his face. “You are entirely out of line, Private. I would advise you to return to your position as soon as possible or risk the consequences.”

“I already _am_ nothing, General,” Bodhi replied with a quiet defiance. “And I have nothing to lose… wouldn’t be here if I did.”

Draven looked away again and strode away toward the direction of the door. If Bodhi was not mistaken, he thought he heard the stocky man in the sand colored jacket muttering to himself as he did so. Bodhi turned back to Mothma, taking another step forward and pressing his hands to the edge of the table. He had laid it all out, laid his soul bare, proven to them beyond a reasonable doubt that this was what he _had to do_. The question marks next to Jyn and Cassian’s death notations in the report had to be erased.

“Senator, _please_ ,” he practically whispered. He did not know what else to say. Mothma was looking away, and when she finally looked up at him he was surprised to see that she had tears shining in her eyes. She looked up at the ceiling, wiping the edge of one eye with a smooth, long fingered hand. Bodhi was about to open his mouth again when she looked directly at him, the emotion fading to seriousness as she stared him down.

“Listen to me very closely, Private,” she began, glancing at the doorway to make sure they were indeed alone, and leaning closer and lowering her voice to speak the rest of it. “What I am about to tell you is information you’re not supposed to have, and you must not divulge to anyone that it was me that told it to you.”

Bodhi quickly nodded his head in agreement, eyes still wide. Mothma licked her lips, staring at him with a renewed steeliness and speaking fervently, urgently.

“This has been left out of the official report but recon reported a _single missing boat_ at the island’s powerboat bay. Other higher command does not seem to think much of it but - I am not so sure. Those boats are rarely used - nobody needs them out there.”

“You think they might have-”  
  
“I do not _think_ anything, Private,” she corrected quickly. “My official position is in line with the Alliance’s. But… that is just a single fact I am divulging to you in confidence. Another fact is this: we have a small, old hangar, around the back of the Temple. It is a storage facility for damaged and decommissioned starfighters and shuttles. Many have been deconstructed for parts and very few are operational in any capacity, but there are some that definitely are. They are not included in the official evacuation, and there should not be anybody back there, at this moment, do you understand?”

Bodhi, putting the pieces quickly together in his head, nodded, feeling his heart rate start to elevate. Mothma paused, looking down at the ground for a moment. She took a deep breath and caught his eye again, looking at him meaningfully.

“I understand you were familiar with Galen Erso.”

Bodhi nodded again. Mothma’s eyes looked sad for a moment.

“I was as well. A very long time ago. I _knew_ there was more to what he was doing, I just _knew_... “

“He was an incredible man.” Bodhi agreed quietly. “I could... see him in Jyn.”

Mothma nodded quickly. She leaned back again, staring at Bodhi with her brows knitted in deep concern, but determination at the same time.

“I will… try to protect your position, if anything,” she told him. “I have strings I can pull to cover you.”

“I’m not too worried about that at the moment, to tell you the truth, Senator.”

The corner of her mouth flicked up. She explained to him the location of this back hangar and gave him the name of a planet to return to, whether or not he was successful.

“You have given a lot, Private Rook,” she observed, looking at him with more softness in her eyes, admiration even, if Bodhi wasn’t mistaken. “I would have hardly expected... I did not think for a moment when I first heard about you that it might come to this.”

“I can only try to match what Jyn and Cassian gave,” he replied, standing up a little straighter, his mind feeling suddenly a lot clearer now that he had a way out of and a semi-official blessing. He felt a great deal of respect for Senator Mothma, knowing she too was taking a risk by placing her trust and information in him.

Mothma nodded solemnly, wrapping a white robe clad arm around herself, and settling Bodhi with another wise look, with just a touch of softness. Bodhi could sense that similarly to Galen, she was entrusting him with her personal faith, besides the information. Once again he was becoming someone’s last hope.

“I can only… this Alliance is _built_ on people like you, and them. Thank you for your initiative, Private. May the Force be with you.”

Bodhi held her gaze for a moment later, shining with quiet gratitude and an awareness of the heaviness of his mission, before he gave a single nod and strode out of the room, his hands certainly no longer shaking. He walked with renewed determination down the hallway, until he turned a corner some ways away and found himself standing face to face with General Draven.

“Rook.” he said, fixing Bodhi with his hard gaze.

“General,” Bodhi stammered, quickly trying to think of a way to get away from him and get back to doing what Mothma had clued him into. “I was just-”

“Listen to me, Private,” Draven replied, suddenly very urgent. He looked up and down the hallway, confirming its emptiness, and then looked at Bodhi again, taking a step closer to him so that Bodhi was trapped between the wall and his stern gaze. “That was _extremely reckless_ what you did in there, but - _I’m going to say this once._ There is a certain hangar on this base, where one might currently be able to find an unattended craft of no use to this Alliance.”

“The decommissioned fighter hangar,” Bodhi replied instantly, and seeing Draven’s raised brow, quickly followed it up. “I heard about it, er, vaguely, earlier.”

Draven nodded quickly, providing Bodhi with the same location that Mothma had just rattled off, and Bodhi internally exhaled in relief.

“I am not telling you to _do_ anything, and I will deny officially that I ever did if accused, but- damn it, Captain Andor was… simply my _best_ . And we sunk so much into extracting _that girl._ ”

“Jyn,” Bodhi prompted, holding his tongue from countering Draven’s disrespectful description any further.

“Yes, _whatever_.” Draven spat quietly back, staring Bodhi in the eye with his lips tight. “You don’t have any official orders right now, I did check. So there is nothing to _currently_ disobey. This insanity is too much of a risk for anyone but you, for all intents and purposes, an invisible man. I leave you to… follow your will.”

Bodhi almost wanted to break into a smile. The General, who had so eviscerated him minutes ago, was now the _second_ commander subtly urging for him to take on a dangerous and unofficial mission to Scarif. He realized how complicated of a thing it was to lead something like the Alliance - balancing personal desires and opinions with the knowledge of what would be best for the rest, the sacrifices that had to be made in that capacity. If he had not done what he had just done, and Jyn and Cassian were out there, somewhere... perhaps the question marks in the ledger would have stayed. He shivered and nodded quickly.

“Thank you, General,” he muttered, not breaking eye contact. Draven stared at him for another second, the lines in his face extremely evident at this distance, the steeliness in his gaze boring a hole in Bodhi.

“I knew you were not done being a _rogue_. Don’t thank me - just _go_.”

Bodhi gave a thorough nod, and Draven stepped back, allowing the young pilot to set back down the hallway, practically breaking into a run now. Bodhi’s heart was in his throat but he allowed himself a few moments of reserved triumph as he began his navigation of the base to the hangar, resolving to make a quick pitstop for a few provisions.

 _He had done it._ He had not achieved his final goal yet, of course, but he had defied everyone in his life who had ever thought him unimpressive or unconvincing definitively, then. He had delivered Galen Erso’s plan, escaped the clutches of the Empire, made it through the capture and imprisonment and torture by the Partisans, assisted in the stealing of the Death Star plans and survived the firefight on Scarif, and now finally, had convinced two higher officers in the Rebel Alliance to trust in him to act on what was essentially a hunch, but a life or death one.

No longer was he simply, Bodhi Rook, low level Imperial turncoat cargo pilot - he was now Bodhi Rook, defector, fighter, survivor, _rogue_.

The latter was certainly much more to be proud of.


End file.
